Lost Perspective 7 : PAYBACK TIME
by Bellegeste
Summary: Snape, Lucius, Harry, even poor Neville all have scores to settle, points to prove, debts to pay... And now it's PAYBACK TIME. Sheds a new light on Neville's Lancashire origins. Perhaps Snape and Neville have more in common than you think.
1. A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**Author's Note: This story follows on directly from LP6 (DECK THE HALLS). There are a few references back, but I've tried to add footnotes etc so that it can be read independently. It's more of an expanded one-shot than a whole Potter saga. The plot is unashamedly melodramatic, but I wanted the story to be primarily character led - I'm more interested in how they all react to what happens than the plot itself…**

**All you really need to know is:**

**The setting is just after Christmas in Harry's 6th year. Snape is Harry's father (but I've done enough bonding angst before so there isn't much of that here); there is no romantic SS/HG in this one. Braque is Snape's pet Giant Tuatara; Quig is his deaf, Australian house elf. At the end of LP6, following a Death Eater attack on his home, on Christmas Day Snape ended up in St Mungo's…**

**Chapter 1 is a short introductory linking chapter, just to recap on the events that led Harry, Hermione and Snape to be in the hospital.**

**CHAPTER 1 : A Hard Day's Night**

"Can they grow new heads too?" Harry asked in a sleepy voice.

"Oh, absolutely! And legs. It's a primitive survival mechanism. One advantage of being stuck in an evolutionary backwater," Hermione replied, too glibly for that time of night. Then she realised that Harry was taking her seriously, dreamily enchanted by the idea.

"That's so amazing. Isn't it? Well cool! You wouldn't think to look at him that - "

"No, Harry. _Joke?_ I was joking." She shook her head, knowing he'd hate to appear gullible.

"Oh." He sounded genuinely disappointed. "So you're saying Braque's tail_ won't_ grow back?"

She sighed, wishing she had stuck to the facts. It was too late for teasing. They were both too tired. It had been a very long, hard day.

"Yes, his_ tail_ will, but not the rest," she clarified hurriedly, propping herself up on an elbow as she looked over at him. "It's like this, Harry. Many lizards have the ability to shed their tails when they're attacked - the vertebrae have special built-in cracks where the tail can shear off. In an emergency."

"No kidding!"

"Then, when it regenerates, it's just cartilage - the tail bone itself doesn't grow back. But it's better than nothing."

"Wow! What if you gave him _Skelegrow_?"

"What? Honestly, Harry, how am I supposed to know?"

"Well you seem to know all this other completely daft stuff."

"Haven't you ever been to the zoo? Don't you bother to read the labels? That's what they're for. It's fairly basic reptilian anatomy, if you must know. But I'm no expert. Tuatara might be different. Ask Quig. Ask Snape."

Snape was in the adjacent room, asleep at last, exhausted by the evening's stream of (unwanted) visitors.

Harry stretched out full length, flexed his hands behind his head, fingers interlocked, and then relaxed them with a huge, jaw-splitting yawn. For someone who had spent Christmas Day in St Mungo's hospital, and was now preparing to spend the night on the couch in the Day Room, he looked remarkably content. This Christmas may have started disastrously, but things were looking up.

"He was pleased, wasn't he? About Braque? It's about time he had some good news for a change." Hermione gave the topic another gentle nudge. She felt like a kid at her first 'sleepover', not wanting to be the first to accept that it was 'lights out' - time to stop talking and go to sleep. However tired she was, too much had happened that day for her to be able to switch off just like that - she needed to wind down slowly.

"Hmm. It's like… you've not seen them together, have you?" mumbled Harry drowsily. "You know how some people are totally useless with people, but they're devoted to their pets? Well, Snape's not like that…"

"Oh, well that's a big help. So what are you saying? That he's a complete misanthrope - well, we've known that all along - and now you reckon he hates his pets too?"

"What? Look, I'm too tired to know what I'm saying. What am I saying?" Harry yawned again. His thoughts were sagging in all directions like a newly washed jumper. "Did you know, Braque's older than he is? Had him all his life. What's the phrase? _They go way back_. Anyway, um… it's a bit weird really. It's not like he's gooey about him or anything; not _soft,_ you know… ugh, can you imagine that? - but you can tell he's fond of him. It's not anything he does in particular…"

"What then?" Hermione asked, impatient with Harry's rambling.

"I think it's more the way he lets Braque touch him. I mean, have you ever seen anyone _touching_ Snape? The way he avoids us you'd think we were lepers…"

Hermione couldn't envisage anyone ever wanting to touch Snape anyway.

"Aha! Now, you see, a lot of people make that mistake…" she pointed out, pleased to be able to share another interesting gem of information, not realising how much it niggled Harry to be corrected. "In actual fact, leprosy isn't a particularly contagious disease at all. You can have quite prolonged physical contact and still not catch it…"

Harry dragged a cushion over his ears and let out an exasperated groan.

"Aaargh! How did we get on to this? Know what, Hermione? I really don't care! Forget the lepers. I was saying… about Snape…? Well, the first time I saw him letting Braque lick his hand… yeah, pretty gross, I know, but it was, sort of, nice…" Harry's voice mellowed with the memory.

"It was so lucky Quig found him," said Hermione, not entirely at ease with the way this conversation was going.

"Quig? No, it was - Oh, you mean found _Braque_? Yes." Harry's thoughts had switched back to Snape. It was Arthur Weasley who had discovered his unconscious body in the trampled ruins of the herb garden at Snape Cottage, half-frozen, choked with smoke, unable to breathe. Arthur had Apparated with him directly to St. Mungo's. It had been touch and go.

Hermione caught the ripple of distress as it eddied in the silence.

"He's OK now, Harry. They'll probably discharge him tomorrow, and we can go back to Hogwarts. Dumbledore's lent us that Portkey…"

"But the Cottage! All his things! Our things… all burned!"

"You don't know that. Kingsley said Snape salvaged some stuff, didn't he? But try not to think about it. There's nothing we can do now. The important thing is that Snape's safe. Anyway, we'd better shut up and go to sleep."

"Yeah. Goodnight, Hermione."

"Goodnight." She shifted her position on her couch, loosening a strand of hair pulling tightly behind her neck, rolling away from an upholstery button which was digging into her hip. Earlier she had been too shattered to bother with Transfiguring it into a more comfortable mattress - in retrospect, a poor decision.

"Oh, Harry?"

"What?"

"Merry Christmas!"

"Yeah."

**End of Chapter. I said it was short! More of an introduction really. Action kicks off in the next one. **

**Next chapter: STRANGLED! Not such a happy Christmas after all then...**


	2. STRANGLED

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**Author's note: This story was either going to be four very long chapters or sixteen short ones. Chapters Two and Three go together, so I'll try to load them both today.**

**I was tempted the write this whole story in a pseudo Samuel Beckett style – just for fun – but came to my senses just in time… I left in a couple of snippets, though, because it seemed a good way of highlighting the minimal amount of detail Snape, Harry and Hermione give Dumbledore as compared with what actually happened… I liked the idea that they each had their own reasons for concealing the truth…**

**CHAPTER 2 : Strangled**

Professor Dumbledore stared long and fixedly into the embers. Only the occasional glimmer of orange amidst the whitening ash betrayed the residual energy of the evening's fire, its force disciplined, garrisoned within the grate. As for that other fire - Dumbledore's eyes blazed with the recollection of those untrained, un-marshalled hordes, rampaging through Snape Cottage; the frenzy of destruction, the riotous, white-hot flames out of control. What if he Floo-ed there now, what would he find? The charred relics of a lifetime, defiled and blackened, the ashes of the past? Oh, the building could be restored - magically, physically, stone by hand-hewn stone, with wands, with labour and hard graft… something could be done. The Cottage would be reborn. But what kind of a Phoenix would Severus prove himself to be?

Absent-mindedly he reached out and stroked Fawkes who had taken up a sympathetic perch on the arm of the chair. The great bird craned his majestic head up, allowing the wizard to chuck and smooth his sinewy neck, the scarlet feathers gleaming with a lustrous, golden, rich, Pharoahic sheen.

"What a mess, eh, Fawkes? What a mess. As if that poor boy didn't have enough to worry about."

The phoenix cocked his head and gave a low, crooning call.

"Quite so," agreed the professor.

x x x

He had heard three equally unsatisfactory versions of the evening's events: from Snape himself, from Harry and from Hermione. Which of them, if any, was telling him the truth? What were they hiding? Who were they trying to protect? And why? Dumbledore eased off his slippers and stretched his bony, bare feet towards the residual warmth of the fire, wiggling the circulation through to his stiff, crooked, cold toes as he pondered this latest - what did one call it ? A 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'(1)? Throw in a 'dilemma steeped in the bile of a crisis' and you just about have it, he mused…

It is not often that one is calmly sipping a mug of late night cocoa (with extra cream and chocolatey sprinkles, and a dash of Old Jamaica - it was Christmas, after all), serenely taking stock of the day - and what an unexpectedly eventful Christmas Day it had been; he couldn't remember one quite like it; certainly not in the last hundred years… - when three distraught people arrive by emergency Portkey right in the middle of your sitting room. Three people to whom he had bidden a kindly farewell not four hours since, and who had been then, if not 100 fine, at least recovering, safe and thankful to be alive. Whatever had happened in the interim? Their guarded explanations had reduced to bullet points in his mind.

**Harry**: Hermione woke me up.

**Hermione**: I heard a noise.

**Harry**: I went to check –

**Hermione**: To see if Professor Snape was alright.

**Harry**: There was someone in the room.

**Hermione**: He ran away.

**Snape**: The intruder was disturbed by Harry's arrival and fled.

**Harry**: So I chased after him.

**Hermione**: I went in to see if Professor Snape was alright.

**Snape**: I was fine.

X X X

…A noise woke her. She didn't know what time it was. For a moment she was disorientated by the unfamiliar, impersonal surroundings, the murky darkness diluted only by the swab of greenish, antiseptic light that slid underneath the door. The bubble-enclosed candles in the room had been extinguished and the dimmed crystal spheres were now bobbing up near the ceiling like giant, floating frogspawn. She blinked stupidly at the straight-backed row of waiting room chairs, and then over at Harry's slumbering form. The noise was coming from Snape's room: a gasping, gagging sound.

"Psst! Harry! Wake up!" she whispered.

"Uh…huh?"

"Harry! Snape's coughing. You'd better see if he's all right."

"…'s a nurses' job…" Harry slurred, groggy and unresponsive.

"No, Harry - you go. He sounds awful, like he can't breathe. Give him some more potion or something."

"Can't you do it? I've just got comfy." Harry was dopey, loath to move, his body leaden with the reverse-alchemy of deep sleep. After spending the previous night in a barn, it was luxury to be snuggled into something warm and soft that didn't stink of sheep.

"Me? Go trotting into Snape's room in the middle of the night? I don't think so! Oh, come on Harry - wake up!"

"I'm going, I'm going." He shoved his feet into his trainers and began fumbling clumsily with the laces.

"Harry, you don't need your sh-" Hermione nagged urgently.

"Keep your hair on; don't panic. Don't know why they bother to have nurses…" Harry grumbled, screwing his eyes against the sudden harsh brightness of the corridor. Still half asleep, he stuck his head round the door of Snape's room.

"Do you need a dr- ? Whoa! Watchit! Hey! You there! Hey! Stop!"

A cloaked figure barged roughly past him, elbowing him sharply in the ribs, catching him completely off guard and slamming him into the wall. Harry reeled, blinded by a black, nauseating slug of pain as his nose connected with the brickwork. Somewhere beyond the throbbing ache that had replaced his face - was his nose broken? It was bleeding… - he heard a hissing chuckle, and the echo of retreating footsteps running down the hallway.

"Harry! Are you…?"

"Help him - " he grunted at Hermione from behind a cupped hand where blood was starting to seep between his fingers, "I'm going after that bastard!"

He was already pelting down the corridor, chasing an impression of grey features beneath the hood, a glimpse of a cloak swirling on the turn from passage into stairwell.

"Help! We need help here! Somebody!" she called out to the absent night-duty staff, as she dashed to Snape's bedside.

He had slumped sideways and back across the pillows, his bandaged hands pawing uselessly at his throat as he fought for breath, nostrils flaring, his chest convulsing in starved spasms, lungs clamouring for oxygen. The earlier smoke-glass pallor of his skin had been routed by an ugly, purplish, night-shade hue. Livid bruises were already clustering on his neck - the 'tag' of throttling fingers, squeezing the life out of him as he lay asleep…

"Oh, God! Help! HELP me!" Hermione shouted. He was asphyxiating. First the smoke inhalation and now this. Strangled? He couldn't breathe. He was going to die. This couldn't be happening. This just… could… not… be happening. Where were those damn Healers? Why didn't anyone come? Where was Harry? What could she do? Why couldn't he breathe? _Calm down… **calm down**, Hermione… Think…_ First Aid…? She'd once attended a talk the local St John's Ambulance officer had given to her mother's Professional Women's Circle - but that was ages ago. What was she supposed to look for - wasn't there some sort of mnemonic? DR-something? DR-ABC! That was it! Now, what did it stand for? D for Danger. Well, the danger had buggered off down the corridor with Harry in hot pursuit. R for what? Respiration? No, didn't the breathing bit come later? Response!

"Professor Snape! Can you hear me?" she hissed, knowing it was a waste of time. No response. She hadn't been expecting one. A for Airway. For Breathing. C for Circulation.

"Help! Anybody there? HELP!" she screamed to her own lonely echo.

All her hours in the library, all those 'outstanding' OWLs… yet nothing had prepared her for this. She felt completely out of her depth, very young, very inexperienced, very frightened. A swell of panic rolled in towards her again, obliviating all logic; she felt weightless, light-headed. _Get a grip, Hermione! _she told herself sternly. _You can do this. You can do something. You've got to. _She cupped her hands in front of her face and took a couple of deep, slow breaths. Hyperventilating wouldn't help anybody. _Think; come on! Forget that it's Professor Snape. Think of him as a person, just a man, just somebody._ That helped. If his airway was obstructed, what could she do? It wasn't as though he'd just choked on a pretzel. That thing with a tube? A tracheotomy. There must be something simpler. Was there a wizard equivalent? Anyway, she couldn't do that - it was way beyond anything she had ever covered in basic Muggle medicine; beyond anything she had learned from her occasional chats with Madam Pomfrey. If she tried anything like that she'd probably hit an artery and he'd bleed to death instead. Hobson's Choice (2). She directed her wand at his throat and prayed.

"_Respira! Spiritum duce!_"

It was too late. Snape's body lolled limply back into the pillows, one hand dropping away from his neck and onto the sheets, the other sliding over the side off the bed, dangling towards the floor.

"Oh, no. No! **Harry**! Help me. Please! Someone!" Hermione let out a wail of despair to the deserted corridor. But her mind was adrenalin clear now. Resuscitation? She'd never had to do it before. _Come on, don't waste time thinking - if you're going to try, it's got to be soon - now, in fact_. She'd only ever seen it done on television - on 'Casualty' - and it had always looked suspiciously easy. And on TV there were usually two people - one to do the chest compressions and the other for the breathing… How did you do it alone? What was the sequence? How many counts? And then someone always shouted "Bag him!" and they'd fit that balloon mask thing over the patient's face… But this wasn't TV. Nor was it the time for experiments. Professor Snape was hardly an ideal candidate on whom to practise.

Knowing there was no time to lose, she tipped his head back. The vicious finger-mark bruises were darkening before her very eyes, each one crowned with a half-moon gouge, welling red, where sharp nails had pierced the skin. Matching gashes, bleeding freely, raked his face, where his assailant had lashed out, claws unsheathed. It was inhuman - what had attacked him? A werewolf?

**End of chapter. **

**This isn't a 'whodunnit' as such… If you guess, that's fine, it'll mean you'll be more tuned-in to how they all react… Of course, it may not be who you think…**

1 'a riddle…'etc. I hardly think Dumbledore would be quoting the Muggle Churchill, but this saying has passed into common parlance.

2 'Hobson's Choice' by Harold Brighouse. i.e. no choice at all.

**Next chapter: DISAPPEARANCES. Harry chases the phantom assassin**


	3. DISAPPEARANCES

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**Author's note: Another short chapter, and more Beckett. (Just wait 'til I get going on the masterpiece 'Waiting for Snapeot'.)**

**CHAPTER 3 : DISAPPEARANCES**

**Snape**: I was fine.

**Hermione**: I stayed with Professor Snape.

**Harry**: I chased the attacker.

**Hermione**: I called for help.

**Harry**: I lost him on the stairs.

**Hermione**: There didn't seem to be any staff on duty.

**Harry**: The Healers helped me check the exits.

**Hermione**: Professor Snape took some potion.

**Harry**: So I came back.

**Hermione**: He wasn't supposed to talk.

**Snape**: It was imperative that I inform the Healer of the breach in security.

X X X

…Harry reached the fire-door and crashed against it with all his weight, numbing his shoulder in the process. A whisk of grey shadow was disappearing downwards, its humanity distorted into unrecognisable whorls through the thick, toughened security glass. Harry caught his breath, spitting blood and dragging his sleeve across his face. The door took its time, yawning back with infuriating slowness, heavy, unhurried, its Self-Opening Charm not programmed for haste. As the gap widened, Harry slipped through and dived down the stairs, two bounds to the first small landing, clutching the banister to swing himself round the tight return, two bounds down the next flight… The door on this landing was still ajar, easing itself shut with no great urgency.

But the shadowy figure had gone. Further along the corridor two Healers in their lime green gowns were studying a chart, their heads bent over the clipboard, medics murmuring in subdued voices.

"Hey!" Harry shouted. They looked up, startled. One of them put a disapproving finger to his lips - it was, after all, the middle of the night. "Hey! Excuse me!" he called again. "Did someone just come down here? Have you seen anyone? There's some maniac on the loose…"

They rushed up to him, robes flapping. Anything was a welcome distraction from the tedium of the night shift.

"Maniac?" The taller of the two gave a flimsy laugh. "The place is full of them, laddie - this is St Mungo's, you know. You'd be mad if someone had Hexed your hair into licquorice laces… Or given you elephant ears…"

"Or had your eyes lacerated by Bowtruckles…"

"That reminds me - what do you call a man with a pin in his eye?" Tall guy went on, ignoring Harry.

"Ooh, don't tell me… think I've heard this one… wait a minute…"

"For Merlin's sake! Pop-Eye!" shouted Harry. "Now, will you please shut up and listen? My father's been attacked…"

x x x

Tall guy would check the far staircase, while his colleague alerted all ward staff to be on the lookout. Harry raced on down to the main entrance hall to warn the receptionist and see if anyone had left by Floo in the last few minutes. He desperately wanted to catch the would-be assassin. He'd show them. He didn't need molly-coddling or protecting. He could do this. No mere Death Eater was going to assault Snape and get away with it. Not if he, Harry, had anything to do with it. He'd bring the evil sod to justice and make him pay - he'd make them _all_ pay – for ruining his Christmas, and torching his home, and hurting his father…

By night the hospital was hushed and spookily empty; it had an abandoned, derelict feel about it, scoured of its daytime bustle, free of the gloomy queues of outpatients and their anxious families, trailing from waiting area to treatment room to dispensary and back to 'Appointments'; free of the marching throngs of dutiful visitors, armed with cards and flowers, with platitudes and ersatz optimism; free of the chatting nurses with their sensible, soft-soled, flat shoes but laughing, off-duty eyes; free of the nameless cogs - the cooks, the technicians, the porters, the elves, the cleaners… And not a Healer in sight. Even the festive decorations had a lifeless, drab look about them. To Harry, as he clattered from floor to floor, the sterile, white wasteland was starkly post-apocalyptic. It felt as though the Last Battle had already come, that humanity had been wiped from the earth with an antiseptic cloth. But he was not going to let the Death Eaters win.

In the foyer it was business as usual. The surly night-watchman had noticed nothing untoward. He listened sceptically to Harry's dire warnings, fingering his wand, prepared to stun the ranting teenager if necessary, clearly convinced that the boy was a wandering inpatient, in need of medication or restraint.

"Oi, you. Move along there. We've got an a.f.a1. coming in any minute – multiple broom pile-up."

Harry realised he was getting nowhere.

He was about half way up the second flight of stairs, on his way back to Snape's room, when his legs gave up the contest and he surrendered onto the step with a sob of sheer frustration. How could he have let the man escape? From under his very nose? He'd almost had him. Had he somehow by-passed the wards and Apparated away, without going near the main entrance? Had he had a Portkey? The hospital security wouldn't be as rigorous as that of Hogwarts, or even Snape's cottage - and _they_ had got through that, hadn't they? Was Dark Magic becoming that powerful? How could he go back and tell Snape that he'd failed?

Harry rested his head wearily against the banister; the sharp wooden uprights dug into his ear and temples, but he was too dejected to care. Go back? He didn't want to go back to furnish Snape with proof of his incompetence. He had wanted, so badly, to prove that Snape had been wrong in not trusting him to fight back there at the cottage; to show that he was worthy and capable.

And what was he going back to? Harry preferred not to think of what might have happened to Snape in those minutes before he had unsuspectingly opened the door, interrupting … what? An interrogation? An execution? More _Crucios_? He'd been a coward; he hadn't wanted to go into the room; he'd left it to Hermione. It wasn't fair; it was all too much; he was too tired for this. Why him? Why did these things always happen to him? Couldn't somebody else deal with it all? Heaving himself up, Harry began to trudge back up to the fourth floor, every step a precipice.

**End of Chapter. Next chapter: PARTNERS IN SHOCK. **

1 a.f.a. – air flying accident


	4. PARTNERS IN SHOCK

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Thanks for the reviews guys. I'm going to try and load this story fairly rapidly -I know that'll mean I get fewer reviews overall, but that's not the only reason we put these fics on the net (or is it?). But I do appreciate them. This is the last of the 'hospital' chapters...**

**CHAPTER 4:Partners in Shock**

Supporting Snape's head, her hand gently under his chin, Hermione was nervously preparing to pinch his nostrils, and blow into his mouth, when his lips parted and with a wheezing hiss he sucked in a meagre breath. At last his chest rose. (Hermione figured that, in moving him, she must have somehow cleared his airway. Or perhaps her spells had worked after all. Had she been the sort of person to thank her lucky stars she would at that moment have been praising the heavens - pinching _that _nose, performing 'mouth to mouth' on Professor Snape was getting _way_ _beyond_ the call of duty! She wasn't even certain she'd have been able to go through with it. It… well, frankly the idea made her skin crawl. And if he didn't like being _touched_, he wouldn't have been too happy with it either!) Then he was gasping, snatching greedy lungfuls of air, and straining to sit up, his eyes wide and wild.

"Kughguhh - " It was a croak, an embryonic sound, brutally aborted.

"Don't talk, Sir. He's gone - whoever it was - Harry went after him - "

Perhaps she shouldn't have told him that. Alarm flared in his eyes. His throat was working, gargling Shrake spines by the look of it, in between the jagged breaths.

In exasperation he made a grab for the flask of Soothing Potion on the bedside cabinet, wrenched out the stopper, tipped half the contents into his mouth and, with a super-human effort of will, forced himself to swallow.

Hermione eyed Snape in dismay. He was upending the flask over his neck, flinching as the inky blue liquid splashed onto the broken skin. For a few seconds the flesh wounds stood out in indigo and blood-red relief, a grotesque tattoo of the assassin's grip. Then, before Hermione's astonished gaze, the swelling began to subside, the scratches to seal. The spilt Soothing Potion evaporated into the darkness in a vanilla scented haze of citrus smoke.

"Sir! You can't… you shouldn't… that potion's too concentrated. The Healer said to be especially careful about the dosage…" she protested, feebly, pointlessly.

Snape didn't need words to express contempt. The look he shot her conveyed both scorn and a world-weary defiance. 'Tough', it told her, 'I know what I'm doing'. Though, as he sat there, wincing, his body twitching with tiny shudders as the potion penetrated the deeper, damaged tissue, Hermione seriously wondered if he did really know, or if he just didn't care.

Where was the punctilious stickler for accuracy and exactitude, the disciplinarian who quantified spillage in terms of deducted House points, the perfectionist who, if nothing else, had instilled into each and every one of his students a cautious respect for the 'power within the potion'? Here he was knocking it back like Firewhisky; slapping it on like cheap aftershave. This was an altogether less controlled, more primal being than the Potions master she thought she knew. At dinner on Christmas Eve, he had adopted a mellow persona and she had fancied herself privileged to be granted a glimpse of the 'real' Snape. And now? What was she to make of this? It was more than whimsical impetuosity, darker than desperation. There was a calculation, a harshness, a negation of pain - a _familiarity_ with pain. It was a rationalisation of risk, a trade-off: recovery for the price of discomfort. This was a man for whom personal suffering had ceased to have meaning. She tried to attach words to describe that flash of insight into yet another Snape. She knew she had seen the shadow of the Death Eater behind the eyes…

x x x

"We must leave. Now."

His gravel whisper startled her. Before Hermione could argue, Snape swung his legs out of bed and stood up - and, as his knees buckled beneath him, just as quickly sat down again, the colour draining from his face. Waxen and faint, he sagged forwards and would have pitched onto the floor had she not stepped in to catch him. She tried to push him back, upright, away from her, but he was heavy. The sensation of cradling Professor Snape's head against her stomach was problematical, even for the ever-practical Hermione.

"Sir?" Was he conscious? Stupid, stubborn man! You couldn't take that much potion and not expect side-effects. Men! Didn't they ever grow up?

"Uh… shock… in shock. All right in a minute…"

She felt the pressure on her middle lessen as he struggled to raise his head. She was, it occurred to her ironically, viewing him from a unique perspective: it was probably the one and only time she would be looking _down_ on those black, greasy locks.

"Don't rush it, Sir. Take some deep breaths - if you can."

She steadied him with trembling hands, feeling his shoulder bones ridge- sharp through the blood-spattered nightshirt. A few seconds more and he made himself sit up. None too steady herself, Hermione sank down next to him on the bed. They sat, side by side, silent partners in shock.

x x x

Pounding feet in the corridor… Harry flung himself into the room and slid to a juddering halt at the foot of the bed. Hands braced on his thighs, he leaned over, panting for effect.

"Lost him!" he puffed, seemingly dazzled by his own heroics. "Must have Disapparated on the stairs… no sign… searched everywhere… Nothing!" A hint of melodrama cloaking the failure.

Their lack of response goaded him into looking up. Only then did he take in the situation: Snape, scarred, white and shaken, and Hermione, her expression fraught and at the same time furious, pulling a blanket more closely round his shoulders.

"What's up? Are you all right?" Harry spoke to Snape but was confronted with blankness. Snape stared with glazed eyes at the polished floor, fingering a button that had been torn loose in the struggle. Harry turned on Hermione.

"I thought you would have at least got some help."

"_Where from_?" Hermione hissed back at him. "You tell me where from! I shouted for help, but no one came. Not a nurse, not a Healer, not even the squib who mans the twenty-four hour snack kiosk. I suppose they all went charging off with you, chasing intruders. What did you do - round up a _posse_? Tell them it was some Christmas _party game_? Were you doing the _conga_ down the corridor? While I was left here all on my own… and Snape couldn't breathe… and…I didn't know what to do… I had to use wand magic - Harry, I don't know the proper spells for this sort of thing - and now - now he's gone and drunk enough Potion to stop a rampaging Hippogriff in its tracks."

"He did? Potion?" This seemed to worry Harry more than Snape's being strangled.

"Swigged half a bottle. That's why he's so zapped. It's… well… it's…it's 'dangerous to exceed the stated dose'!" she declared, falling back on the formulaic phrase rather than admit to her panic. "Harry, he was completely _irresponsible_! He might have OD-ed… Think how that would have looked. Really impressive for a Potions master!"

"Miss Granger - "

It was only her name, but Hermione's arm snapped away from his shoulders and down to her side as though he had yelled '_Protego_'.

"Enough of your hysterics! Alarmist drivel! I am neither irresponsible nor, as you so inelegantly put it, _zapped_. Who is the Potions expert here? You? Those half-brained, soi-disant Healers? Or me?" he rasped angrily. "I had fully expected to experience a reaction. It was, as you see tolerable and of short duration. Your concern for my reputation is unnecessary; your assessment of my competence is misjudged. And I don't need your simpering sympathy."

Have it your own way. She bit her lip, not wanting to argue with him now, not after what he'd just been through. But she knew what she'd seen, and, in her _misjudged_ opinion, the end did not justify the means. It was all very well for Harry, crusading off after trespassing Death Eaters, she thought, but Snape might have died, and what could she have done about it?

"So you got your voice back?" Harry stated the obvious.

"I must speak to the Healer in charge."

At last he was talking sense.

"Of course you must, Sir. He'll need to examine those scratches."

"No, Hermione. I wish to discuss the matter of security, and then I intend to leave."

"You can't, Sir! You're not well enough to go anywhere. Is he, Harry?"

She appealed to Harry for support, trusting in his concern for his father's wellbeing.

"Too damn right!" Harry exclaimed hotly.

Hermione smiled complacently - together they'd be able to convince Snape to stay and rest. But Harry continued,

"Stay here and be murdered in our beds? Not bloody likely! The sooner we're out of this place the better. Dumbledore left us that Portkey, - we might as well use it. We'll be back at Hogwarts in no time…"

**End of Chapter. (Some of the later chapters are longer than this,I promise.)**

**Next Chapter: DUMBLEDORE'S DIAGNOSIS. There's no fooling the Headmaster - or is there?**


	5. DUMBLEDORE'S DIAGNOSIS

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: here's today's installment. Another short one, but there's actually quite a lot going on in this chapter if you read in between the lines.**

**Silverthreads: if you want a longer chapter, hang on until chapter 16. That's very long! LOL (Actually it's the one-shot that this story grew from).**

**Chapter 5: DUMBLEDORE'S DIAGNOSIS**

If Dumbledore was surprised, or even alarmed, by the unexpected appearance of Snape, Harry and Hermione in his sitting room in the early hours of Boxing Day morning, he did not show it. One might easily make the mistake of believing it to be a regular occurrence. And yet he set aside his Christmas cocoa, and left it half-finished, cooling to brown-skinned undrinkability; while that other night-cap - the long, soft, pointed, brushed-cotton version, in stripy grey with the purple pom-pom – slipped from his silvery hair and lay forgotten and unheeded on the rug.

Fawkes, however, emitted a piercing screech, neck feathers fluffing. From his perch he surveyed the humans with a distrustful, glittering, aristocratic eye, disapproving of the night-time disturbance. Several of the portraits gave a bleary yawn, taking in the unusual scene, and settled back in their frames for a spot of seasonal eavesdropping.

"My goodness! Whatever can have happened? Is everything all right? Well, sit down now you're here… Can I offer anyone a Sherbet Comfit? Or cocoa? Let me build up the fire - it's none too warm in here… I was under the impression that visiting hours were over," Dumbledore commented mildly, wondering which of the three would be the one to offer an explanation. He was anticipating a cursory 'Forgive the intrusion, Headmaster' from Severus, but the Potions master was grimly taciturn.

"Is it not more customary for the – er – visitors to come to the hospital, rather than vice versa?"

Each of them seemed to be waiting for the other to speak, listening for their cue.

Unruffled perhaps, but not unobservant, Dumbledore registered new undertones of harmony and discord within the trio - a chorus of tension; solo preoccupations. He noted the girl's anxious hand on Severus' arm, guiding him to an armchair; the evidence of recent injury; the general air of exhaustion; the relief on the two students' faces as they flopped down, dumping their concerns at his feet like heavy bags of shopping.

"Severus, you're hurt."

"It's nothing, Headmaster. Superficial scratches."

"Nonetheless, let me look."

With a fine delicacy of touch, he tilted the Potion master's head up a little, examining his neck. The tell-tale traces of the attempted strangulation were fading but still visible.

"Despicable!" Anger lines creased the old wizard's brow. "Severus, who did this to you?"

Snape sighed; Hermione looked uncomfortable. Harry exclaimed heatedly,

"It was a Death Eater! I almost caught him. I'd got him cornered, but he Disapparated - " _Who was going to say he hadn't?_

"An unforeseen development. Most unfortunate." Dumbledore was listening to Harry, his expression grave, but his attention did not waver from Snape's scarred face. "Shut your eyes now," he murmured, stroking his thumb lightly down the length of each of the remaining wounds that the Potion had missed. "There. That should do, until Poppy can take a proper look."

Snape submitted wordlessly to the Headmaster's ministrations, too drained to protest. Hermione was touched to witness this moment of unguarded acquiescence. She felt oddly like an anthropologist at the discovery of a hitherto unrecorded species.

"Your Healer appears to have opted for an aggressively proactive treatment," remarked Dumbledore dryly, observing the rapidly and recently healed marks. The blue eyes had made their own independent diagnosis of the situation. Snape did not correct him.

"Healer!" Hermione, on the other hand, thought it was time Dumbledore was set straight on a few facts. "He wouldn't -"

A silent veto flashed from Snape's eyes and she choked on the betrayal of confidence. To a casual onlooker, Snape might have been inclining his head to swing a stray strand of hair out of his face, but to Hermione the gesture was loaded with prohibition. She had seen Harry, on occasions, recoil from that stare as from a physical blow, and now she too felt its coercive force like a slap to the cheek. He might as well have shouted out loud, 'I alone shall decide when, how and to whom I shall divulge the details of tonight's attack." She did not agree, and yet she widened her eyes in assent. The pressure of his leaning head had left its impression in her loyalties - if he wanted to make light of what he had endured, it was up to him.

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"Oh, nothing, Professor Dumbledore." She shrank back into her chair, puzzled both by Snape's reproof and her own meek acceptance of it.

"Harry's arrival disturbed the assailant," Snape said deliberately, "before any serious damage was inflicted." He challenged them to contradict him.

This then was the version of events for public consumption, heavily censored and abridged – but for whose benefit? Why should Snape want to protect Harry or the Headmaster or anyone from the truth? He could have been killed tonight - shouldn't they know that?

"You have had a lucky escape then, Severus," Dumbledore gave an appropriate reply, with every appearance of sincerity.

_Oh, for Merlin's sake! He doesn't believe a word of it - why doesn't he just say so?_ Hermione felt at a distinct disadvantage here - it seemed that Snape and Dumbledore were playing by some esoteric, adult, wizard rules; a code to which she was not privy. Bluff and counter-bluff.

With a wistful glance in the direction of his mug of cold cocoa, the old wizard settled himself back comfortably in his chair, pondering his next move. He pulled his dressing gown more tightly round him, tucking the long, purple and gold folds about his legs. There followed what Hermione could only assume was what is meant by a 'pregnant pause'… In the stillness, she became increasingly aware of the numerous clockwork gadgets and assorted enchanted devices in the round room, softly whirring, variously ticking. _It's like waiting for a pronouncement from the Oracle…_

"Ah, Miss Granger - my Portkey, if you would be so kind." Less than Delphic, Dumbledore held out his hand for the woollen sock - a Black Watch tartan design. "It would be as well to reunite it with its fellow, before I forget. They were a present from Professor McGonagall this time last year. One can never have too many socks!"

Hermione was only too glad to pass back the spelled garment. It was a convenient choice, she conceded, pulling it out of her pocket, but she couldn't help wishing that Dumbledore had Charmed something a little less personal - his kettle again, or a tea-pot, for example, or a coin or a badge. And, if he had to use a sock, why risk one of a pair? She'd bet he had a draw full of odd socks (doesn't everyone?), each yearning to acquire a new status and _raison d'être_ as a functioning Portkey.

She sensed Dumbledore's questioning gaze upon her, but she felt herself unable to construct an answer that might not be – here she glanced tentatively over at Snape - _incriminating_. Now that they were all safe, the exhaustion had settled on her like a deep snowfall, blanketing her responses, muffling her thoughts in a sensory white-out.

Harry too was overcome by an immense tiredness. Was he fated never again to get a decent night's sleep? It certainly felt that way. He'd been trying to concentrate on what Dumbledore was saying, but, as the warmth of the re-lit fire stole through the room it was quilting his consciousness, bedding-down his brain in its softly padded glow…

"So then, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? If it were merely a question of delivering my Christmas gift in person, it could, I dare say, have waited until tomorrow… Which of you would care to explain what has been going on?" Professor Dumbledore asked finally, the query directed at each of them in turn. Harry gave himself a little shake and blinked. The sooner they got the questions out of the way, the sooner they could all get to sleep.

"Hermione woke me up," he began…

X X X

"…and so we used the Portkey. And here we are," he concluded.

"Indeed you are, my boy."

Dumbledore summoned his most avuncular smile, inwardly marvelling at their collective talent for omission and abbreviation and, if he were not much mistaken, deliberate obfuscation.

"And it's time the two of you - all of you - were in bed. There is not much we can do at this time of night. Given that the culprit escaped and will be long gone, I see little point in alerting the Ministry at this hour. I doubt if Cornelius would appreciate a Floo message right now. Oh, Harry, if you can endeavour to remain awake for a few more minutes, I have an errand for you. If you and Hermione could stop by the Owlery and send an owl to Madam Pomfrey, requesting her immediate return…"

"Waste of time. Don't bother," growled Snape.

"I'll be the judge of that, Severus. Off you both go then - the professor and I have matters to discuss. Don't worry, Hermione, I shall not detain him for long…"

Dumbledore watched as the two students set off down the spiral staircase, waiting until the change in the quality of their footsteps reassured him that they were in the corridor and heading away. Then he shut the door.

"You've frightened that girl, Severus," he observed.

"Too squeamish by half," replied Snape, dismissively.

"And Harry?"

"Is everything a Gryffindor should be - and less."

"Oh, I think we can allow the boy the occasional creative flourish - a touch of bravado never hurt anybody. So, he's embellished his story a little, has he? He only wants you to be proud of him."

"Pack of lies!" Snape snorted.

"So tell me the truth."

The bowed head lifted a fraction and Dumbledore found himself drawn into the depths of Snape's gaze, into blackness, into those two dark tunnels with no light at their end.

"You _recognised_ your assailant, didn't you Severus?"

**End of Chapter. So, what's going on? Any theories yet?**

**Next chapter: AVOIDANCE TACTICS. What is Snape hiding from Dumbledore? **


	6. AVOIDANCE TACTICS

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**CHAPTER 6:Avoidance Tactics**

The second the dungeon door closed behind Hermione, Snape seized his outdoor cloak and flung it round his shoulders. He also pulled the long, black scarf down from its hook and wound it, rather more carefully, round his neck. Then he reached for the pot of Floo powder on the mantelpiece.

"Going somewhere, Severus?"

"Headmaster!"

The bent figure of Professor Dumbledore clambered stiffly out of the fireplace, brushing off a few stray, green Floo sparks, allowing his beard to unravel from his fist where he had it coiled up safely out of the flames' way. With one gnarled hand pressed into the small of his back, he cranked himself upright.

"Oh dearie me. I'm getting too old for this cramped 'economy' travel. One of these years we'll have to install walk-in Inglenooks…"

Considerably put out, Snape stepped aside, letting Dumbledore shuffle past him into the room.

"Good morning, Headmaster," he said coolly.

"And the top of a very fine morning to you too, Severus. Up with the lark as usual, I see. I thought you might have permitted yourself the luxury of a lie in, today of all days. How are you feeling? You were just off out?"

"I was." _Until you arrived_.

"Dressed for the weather, eh? Planning to take advantage of the winter sunshine? We see precious little of it at this time of year. It's deceptive though, I fear, you should wrap up - there's a nip in the air. I might go so far as to say the _atmosphere_ has become decidedly chilly…"

Dumbledore studied the Potions master, analysing his discomfiture, and shed the joviality.

"Where were you going, Severus? You were not, perchance, trying to _avoid_ me?"

"Don't be absurd!"

"Forgive me if my suggestion appears uncharitable. But, from where I am standing, it is far from absurd. I may be wrong - alas, I increasingly am - but last night I asked you a question, and it seems to me, Severus, that you are indeed doing everything possible to avoid answering it."

Snape could hardly refute the accusation. Cringing inwardly, he had excused himself the previous evening on the pretext that his throat was still too painful for talking, and had left Dumbledore sitting before the dying fire, suspicious and dissatisfied. And yes, this morning he had hoped to leave before the inevitable confrontation. If only he hadn't been delayed by the interview with Granger.

Yet, it had been imperative to secure the girl's silence. That done, he had more important things to do than talk. He needed to think.

"I was merely intending to Floo to the Cottage. To inspect the damage," he told Dumbledore smoothly. _And see Quig, and Braque… and check the wreckage for evidence, for any indication as to whether or not the Death Eaters and their mob had found what they had come for_.

He had lain awake for hours - in the hospital and again last night – attempting to rationalise the attack on the Cottage. The assault on his person was, he reasoned, of less overall significance. He'd suffered worse. You couldn't associate with Death Eaters without coming up against physical violence. It went with the territory. Until he had proof, one way or the other, he was unwilling to alert (and, in all likelihood, panic) the Headmaster. It might be a false alarm. On the other hand, if his theory was correct, then they could have a problem.

With Dumbledore's parting "Sleep well, then, Severus" still sounding in his ears, Snape had headed for his rooms the night before, sick with exhaustion and yet knowing that he would be unable to sleep if he did not first check something out. Instead of ceding to his body's demands and collapsing into bed, he had fetched his Pensieve (1) from the cupboard…

x x x

"A few minutes of your time, Severus…" requested Dumbledore - except that it was an instruction, and one which Snape had no choice but to obey.

With a small huff of annoyance, he replaced the Floo powder, unopened, on the mantel. Pointedly he let the clasps on his cloak remain fastened. The scarf he kept on anyway, taking comfort in the extra warmth around his bruised neck.

"Headmaster - "

"No, let me say my piece. I don't want there to be any misunderstandings." In physical terms the old wizard was shorter, frailer and far weaker than Snape, who could have swatted him aside at any moment. But his magical stature was unrivalled and commanded respect. He lifted a sorrowful face to meet the younger man's eye. "Long ago, Severus, I placed you in a position of trust at Hogwarts, and I have never had reason to regret that decision. You do _know_ that?"

Snape inclined his head.

"I understand that you might be reluctant to discuss the details of what happened at St Mungos - it must have been a terrible shock for you. Most unpleasant…"

A dismissive shrug this time.

"But try and see it from my point of view. From any outsider's point of view. This reticence of yours could be construed as obstruction. Do you not want the criminal to be brought to justice? I would have thought that you would have been the first to want him behind bars. Your behaviour is, quite frankly, less than cooperative. It begs a question, Severus - are you being totally honest with me? And, I'm afraid, the answer would seem to be 'no'."

Dumbledore paused, leaving the opening wide for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Snape avoided meeting the old wizard's gaze - he could never be sure quite how accomplished a Legilimens the headmaster really was and he suspected that today his own powers of Occlumency would be diminished. His frown tightened, stretching the recent scars into white weals across his face. But Dumbledore was not to be discouraged; he persevered: "What is it, Severus? Don't you trust me? Can't you see that your desire to maintain the anonymity of your attacker is - not to put too fine a point on it – downright suspicious! Whom are you trying to protect? Your links with the Death Eaters were severed the moment Harry betrayed you to Voldemort. Weren't they? Look, my boy, if it was someone you recognised from your time in his service… I can appreciate that an element of, what shall we call it, 'camaraderie' may linger… or that you may see it as a personal score you wish to settle… But this isn't something you can take into your own hands! For all we know, it could be the start of a targeted campaign against members of the Order. Merlin knows, I'll do my utmost to support you on this - just give me something to go on. Put an old man's mind at rest. Severus?"

Perplexed and impatient, Snape ran his fingers through his hair. The patches where the flames had singed it still felt crimped and rough to the touch. He was anxious to get going, and yet loath to leave the old wizard plagued by injurious assumptions. He uttered a sigh of resignation - he was going to have to tell him now, and think through the ramifications later.

"My assailant was not a Death Eater. Headmaster, I think you had better sit down."

**End of Chapter.**

**Next chapter: PROTECTIVE MEASURES. How does Snape swear Hermione to silence?**

1 Pensieve – I have taken the liberty here of giving Snape his own Pensieve.


	7. PROTECTIVE MEASURES

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Another short, slow-burn chapter. It is all going somewhere, I promise. Think of it as a roller-coaster where you have to crank your way slowly up the steep bit before you go over the top...**

**Chapter 7: PROTECTIVE MEASURES**

Professor Dumbledore's expression was grim. Ruminating on Snape's explanation, he smoothed an aged, veined hand over his long, silvery moustache and whiskers, a repetitive, slow, thoughtful stroking motion, which belied the active workings of his agile mind.

"And you say the boy knows none of this? Are you sure? Don't you think he has a right to know?" Dumbledore looked dubious.

"Harry? No - by the time Harry returned, I was… the worst was over. He only knows what he saw. The less he knows the better."

"But surely Miss Granger will have told him what happened? They are friends, Severus. And friends _confide_ in each other. It's only natural. Are you seriously telling me that the child won't have said anything?"

"No, I don't think she will. I have spoken to her."

x x x

It had been an awkward exchange for both of them.

"You wanted to see me, Sir?"

"Come in, Miss Granger."

"Yes, Sir." She stepped through the door into his office and stood looking at him curiously, wondering why he had sent for her so early in the morning, noticing the dark, purple-brown smudges beneath his eyes which mirrored her own. Despite their fatigue last night, it seemed neither of them had got much sleep.

"How are you, Sir?"

"Fine," he answered brusquely, automatically. It was his standard reply to any health-related question. She said nothing, but he could sense her, unconvinced by his reply, checking him over, and something inside him relented, succumbing to her quiet concern. "What do you expect?" he snapped, but then adding more truthfully, "Tired. Sore."

She nodded in sympathy, ignoring the scowl.

Instantly regretting the momentary lapse into informality, Snape pulled himself strictly back to the point.

"Yesterday - " he paused, cleared his throat, uncertain how to couch the question. Just the word 'yesterday' unearthed a Doxy's nest of unpleasant images. "_Yesterday_ I heard you tell Harry that you had used 'wand magic' on me. You seem to be making something of a habit of it, Miss Granger. I wish to know exactly which spells you performed. You are aware - you should be by now - that it is against school rules to use wands on a member of staff, unless under supervision in a controlled classroom situation? You can't pretend you were Confunded… What's the excuse this time - another escaped convict on the loose? Another transforming werewolf in the hospital?"

He hoped the severe tone would mask the urgency of his desire to find out… to fill the distressing vacuum in his memory. How long had he been unconscious? What had she done? He had to know to what extent he was indebted to this child, what he owed her. He hated being indebted to anyone. The idea of being defenceless and at the mercy of the girl's magic was mortifying.

"Well?"

"I'm sorry, Sir. I didn't know what to do. They were the first spells that came into my head. I'm sure there are more suitable ones…"

"**Which** spells, Miss Granger?"

"_Respira!_ And _Spiritum duce,_ Sir."

He caught his breath - that was heavy-duty Emergency magic – and sat down weakly, the inference whirling in his brain like a mace.

"Are you all right, Sir?"

"Yes, yes of course." _The child saved my life_.

"I had to do _something_, Sir. You'd stopped breathing. Here - " She thrust her wand towards him. "Do a _'Priori'_ and see for yourself…"

He made no move to take the wand and, after a moment, she lowered it and hesitantly returned it to her pocket.

"Have you mentioned any of this to Harry?" he asked sharply.

"No, Sir."

Everything had been so fraught at the hospital. Linctus Dollop had arrived on the scene, flubbery and obsequious with apology. Suddenly the room had been crawling with medics, nurses and Healers, as though, like sea turtles, they had hatched en masse, and were scuttling about their work, mopping the dried blood from Harry's squashed (but unbroken) nose, bringing Hermione a cup of sweetened tea. Snape had crushed them underfoot, scornfully shrugging off their well-meant but overdue services, and drew Dollop aside, pinning him in the corner of the room, an Oyster-catcher isolating his hatchling before devouring it in a single gulp.

And later, by the time Dumbledore sent them off on his little errand, trudging up to the Owlery, Harry and Hermione had been almost catatonic with exhaustion - too tired to chat.

"Then don't. Don't mention it at all." Seeing her flinch at the harsh imperative, Snape attempted to modify it. "What I mean, Miss Granger, is that this information would only upset Harry. I do not wish him to be told. You will not tell **anyone**. Is that clear?"

_Consideration for Harry? Salvaging his own image more like!_

"Yes, Sir. He was a bit funny about it anyway, Sir."

"Funny?"

"It was almost as if he'd rather not know."

Harry was odd that way - she'd noticed it before, especially with regard to Snape. He seemed to have the man on a kind of pedestal, but whether he was there as a figure-head or for target-practice she couldn't always tell. But it kept a distance between them. It was fine as long as things were going well – there was a kind of adversarial competitiveness about their relationship – but if ever they ceased to be sparring partners, if Snape slipped from that elevated position and needed help climbing back up, Harry shied away from getting too close. It puzzled and saddened Hermione - in rejecting Snape at those times, Harry seemed intent on throwing away his chances of strengthening the fragile bond with his father. Was it a subconscious thing, she wondered, an instinct for self-preservation? Or some ridiculous, macho _man thing_? All Hermione knew was that every time Snape had been in trouble - after he'd been tortured by Voldemort at the beginning of term for instance, or when he'd got into such a state about Harry disappearing at Hallowe'en, or again now, when he'd been attacked and his house had been wrecked - instead of being supportive, Harry had backed off and behaved like an utter plonker.

"He doesn't want to know? Fine. Keep it that way."

"Yes, Sir. Is that all, Sir?" She was edging towards the door now.

"Yes. You may go. Ah, no, actually. Miss Granger, about the potion…" _Why was he hedging around the subject like some stammering first year?_ He was annoyed with himself. The last thing he wanted to do was invest the incident with any spurious significance, but neither could he ignore it or forgive himself. He had - he could hardly say the words even to himself - _taken comfort_ in the girl's silent presence yesterday. He had _shared_ a moment of weakness with this child.

"Oh, I checked up on that, Sir. I went to the library first thing. It will have been the Salamander Blood that made you dizzy. It really isn't recommended to ingest…"

"Yes, all right!" he interrupted. _Forget it ever happened, can't you?_

"I don't suppose Harry would be very interested in that either, Sir. I wasn't going to say anything." Their eyes met briefly, just long enough to seal the unspoken pact. She was being tactful, he realised, not casual but kind. This was calculated to protect his reputation, spare his feelings… _Dragon's teeth!_ _Could he be any further indebted to this girl than he already was?_

"You showed considerable presence of mind, yesterday, Miss Granger."

She blushed, and the gratitude withered in embarrassment on his lips. "You may go now. That will be all."

_Is that all the thanks I get? Ungrateful sod! It's not as though I'm asking for a reward or anything! Next time I'll leave him to die! _

**End of Chapter**

**Next chapter: VENGEANCE IS MINE. Sympathy from an unexpected quarter.**


	8. VENGEANCE IS MINE

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Re: reviews. I just want to say that it is really heartwarming when someone homes-in on certain descriptions or phrases which I have tried especially hard to convey as faithfully asI can. Thank you for noticing and appreciating.**

**Chapter 8: VENGEANCE IS MINE**

Professor Dumbledore expressed surprise.

"Spoken to Miss Granger? Already? This morning? And she's agreed to keep quiet? Well, you must have put the fear of Merlin into her, that's all I can say! You know, I will be questioning both of them individually - if she's going to bring up any accusations of threatening behaviour - intimidation, dissuasive Hexing, that sort of thing - it would be as well if I'd heard it from you first, Severus. If I'm going to find out that you've Obliviated a student, I'd rather be prepared… I don't recall obtaining Ministry authorisation…" He wasn't entirely joking.

"I have made the position clear. She will respect my wishes," Snape stated. The falsehood slid smoothly from his lips, more a misrepresentation than an actual lie. Whatever emotion had enlisted Granger's co-operation, it was not - this time – respect for his professorial authority.

"But you haven't told her…?"

"Of course not."

"And neither she nor Harry suspects…? They didn't get a clear view of the attacker?"

"Apparently not."

"That's a blessing. We don't want this getting blown up into a scandal. We can do without the _Daily Prophet_ getting hold of it - giving them ammunition for their latest crusade. It's delicate enough already, what with the pressure groups lobbying for more stringent containment measures…"

"… and the wizard rights activists banging on about personal liberty? See where that's got me!" Snape had been rubbing the back of his neck, massaging the stiffness, cautiously testing his range of movement with a few unobtrusive stretches and rotations.

Dumbledore regarded him quizzically.

"You are quite positive that you have done nothing recently, Severus, to _provoke_ this attack? You didn't _say_ anything? Have an argument? Cause offence in any way?"

"Beyond the fact of my _mere existence_, you mean?" Some insults stayed with you for ever. Perhaps everyone secretly felt that way about him. "Of course not. What do you think I am?" A flash of anger.

"All right, Severus, I know you're upset, but if you feel so strongly, why haven't you gone to the Ministry? Pressed charges? You'd be within your rights to do so. I'll tell you why. Because you feel, as I do, that this matter can be handled internally, without bureaucratic intervention. Am I correct?"

Azkaban - that would be tantamount to a death sentence. There was no point in pressing for an arrest. The Wizards' Council would probably dismiss the case on a technicality anyhow, or accept a plea of diminished responsibility. Why waste everybody's time?

"Pah!"

"I'll take that as a yes. However, you may have managed to persuade Miss Granger to keep her mouth shut, but there is still the question of the nursing staff at St Mungo's. They will have seen the evidence. Are you sure that we can rely on their discretion?"

"Why do you think I drank that damn Potion? I silenced that fool of a Healer." Snape straightened his shoulders, sure of himself, unapologetic. He had no qualms about mincing a worm like Dollop - he took no great pleasure in intimidation but sometimes it was necessary.

"Not permanently, I trust, Severus?" Dumbledore looked as though he would prefer not to inquire too closely into the Potion master's methods.

"It was tempting…"

"So now, confidentiality aside, we have the school to consider - the children. Do you know, Severus, I'm not convinced that hushing this up is the wisest course of action. It's not as though the background to the affair is a complete secret - it's just something that the, er, 'parties concerned' prefer not to publicise."

Snape was inwardly decrying the old man's reluctance to say the name out loud. As if, by naming the culprit, they would in some way be prejudging the case or betraying a confidence. It wasn't as though they were in Dumbledore's office with all the portraits' ears flapping for a tit-bit of scandal to spread around their likenesses in wizard homes and institutions throughout the country. This periphrasis was a ludicrous precaution, a mere nicety, coy and unnecessary - after all, the Headmaster had never been averse to naming the Dark Lord. And yet, Snape found himself following his example. Dumbledore went on, voicing some of Snape's own concerns.

"Sooner or later the truth about this latest incident will come out, and then what? Apart from anything else, what about Harry? Are they not friends? How's he going to feel when he finds out what really happened?"

"You think he might take retaliatory action? The same idea had occurred to me."

That wasn't what Dumbledore had meant at all. His anxieties for Harry had more to do with the boy's feeling slighted by his father's unwillingness to take him into his confidence. But Snape continued,

"You saw what he was like last night, Headmaster. His head is full of inflated notions of family honour - I blame James Potter! 'Avenge thy father', indeed! What other barbaric rites did he instil in him? Harry's quite likely to take some foolish reprisals in the misguided impression that he is doing me a favour. Why he thinks I require his vainglorious heroics…"

"And, naturally, the thought of a reprisal had never crossed your own mind?" The twinkle had been absent from Dumbledore's eyes so far this morning, but now it made its first teasing appearance. Snape noticed it with increasing irritation.

"My vengeance, should I _choose_ to exact it, would be swift and… …appropriate." His customary description was 'swift and deadly', but, in this case, death would be an easy escape… Why should he make anyone's life any easier? He turned his thoughts back to his son. "But Harry - Harry's a different matter. He is undisciplined and impetuous - _and_ defiant. Who knows what he will do next? I don't."

Snape hated the feeling of powerlessness that came over him whenever he was reduced to discussing Harry's behaviour. The boy was as explosive as a volatile potion and yet far less predictable; his responses were unquantifiable, inconsistent and uncontrollable. There was no precise recipe for a teenager's emotions, no standard set of reactions. They would never behave like measured ingredients in a calibrated cauldron. It was maddening!

Dumbledore allowed his whiskers to hide his smile at Snape's frustration. Being a father was constantly providing the gruff Potions master with new and unusual challenges, which, grudgingly, he was rising to meet. But he would insist on judging the boy so critically. Dumbledore had every confidence in Harry's generosity of spirit.

"So what do you intend to do, Severus? You can't ignore it. Pretend it never happened? That's not like you. And, naturally, there's the question of…" The blue eyes had become gimlets, piercing Snape's evasions. "Severus, I will not countenance any acts of personal revenge against any members of this establishment. Apart from anything else I do not wish there to be any disruption to the children's classes – but, if his presence in the school is going to be a constant reminder…"

"I'll speak to him," Snape muttered.

"You do that, but be careful. You're hardly renowned for your diplomacy, you know, Severus. And what if he decides to unburden himself? To Harry, for instance? The pressure of guilt is a heavy load to bear. If I were you I'd have a chat to the boy as soon as possible. The other children will inevitably get to hear of it. Though, in the long run, that may prove to be no bad thing… Children can often surprise you - they can be exceedingly accommodating at times, very accepting…" In his years as a Headmaster, Dumbledore had seen countless examples of charitable forgiveness, sometimes in the most unexpected quarters.

Snape's thoughts seemed to have sunk into a mine-shaft of memory, quarrying some deep, inner injustice. Dumbledore wasn't sure if the man had heard him.

"Severus? I say, you _owe_ it to the boy - "

But he had heard only too well.

"_Accepting_? And children can also be cruel, vindictive brats. Any hint of non-conformity is targeted with ridicule and derision. He will be subjected to intolerable abuse, for the sake of something over which he has no control and which is not his fault."

The outburst issued from a seam of resentment, long buried, but still a rich source of spleen. Snape turned away, appalled at himself for speaking so freely in front of the old man, and stood, arms wrapped about his chest, his foot tapping slow time against the edge of the hearth, each tap releasing a pocket of pressurised bitterness.

Dumbledore recognised the bile without fully understanding the reason behind it. _If grudges were flowers…_ he thought mildly, _our Severus would have a prize-winning bouquet here. How he nurtures them._

"I'm surprised to hear you speaking so passionately in his defence, Severus," said Dumbledore quietly. "You should, in that case, make it clear that you do not hold him personally responsible… I have always been under the impression that there is no love lost between you… I know you've been doing a little extra-curricula brewing on his behalf - and we all appreciate your efforts there, but, well, quite frankly, dear boy, you amaze me…"

Snape had surprised himself. Tolerance and forgiveness were deep water sentiments which rarely surfaced from his emotional abyss.

"And Albus is not easily amazed!"

The two wizards swung round at the sound of the voice to see Madam Pomfrey emerging, crisply immaculate, from the Floo. Recalling his own crumpled, smut-stained arrival, Dumbledore was actually amazed for the second time in less than a minute - but he refrained from comment lest he shatter her illusions.

"Harry Potter's Owl referred to another attack?" the matron queried, addressing the headmaster but already moving briskly towards Snape. He shrank before her keen, professional scrutiny, seeing his plans for the day about to be amputated by hours of unnecessary medical fuss.

"Oh, marvellous. Raphael (1) to the rescue!" he muttered sardonically under his breath.

"I heard that! Would you rather I were an Avenging angel?" Her prim smile softened the asperity of her tone. She expected nothing less from the surly Potions master than uncooperative resistance and that's what she was getting.

"Hurry up then. I've got things to do. Can't you just cut to the chocolate and be done with it?" he protested weakly.

"Anyone would think I run a sweet shop!" She raised her eyebrows at Dumbledore. "Isn't it wonderful, Headmaster, how your teaching staff hold each other's expertise in such high esteem? Come on now…let's have a look at you."

"I don't need - " Snape objected, as Pomfrey took him gently but firmly by the arm and pressed him towards a chair. Vexed, he looked to Dumbledore for support, but the old wizard appeared to have found a particularly bothersome egg-stain on the front of his robe and was picking at it assiduously with a long, yellowing fingernail. He was humming to himself and refused to make eye contact.

"Sit down, Professor," she instructed in a no-nonsense way that brooked no dissent, "and let's see what you're hiding under that scarf of yours."

She made a couple of preliminary passes with her medi-wand and took his pulse, frowning. "And you might as well take that cloak off too - you're not going anywhere today…"

**End of Chapter.**

**Next chapter: A LANCASHIRE LAD. Cut to another part of the castle and another thread of the story. How are Harry and Hermione occupying their time? And what exactly is under the cupboard?**

1 Raphael – the Archangel Raphael, patron of the blind, happy meetings, nurses, physicians and travellers. Snape refers to him in a medical not a religious context.


	9. A LANCASHIRE LAD

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Reviews: Wow! Some of you seem to think I have gone over to the Dark Side... and that Snape is my instrument of vengeance... Well, we'll see. **

**As I said at the end of Ch.8, we now cut to another part of the castle where Harry and Hermione are filling-in time since their return from St Mungo's. (But we get back to Snape soon...).**

**At last! A long chapter!**

C**hapter 9 : A LANCASHIRE LAD (****1)**

"Halt! Ye pribbling, pottle-deep pumpion!"

"_What_?"

"Stand fast, I say! Thou art a dankish, fen-sucked giglot! Fie, Sir! A plague on both your houses!"

"We're both in Gryffindor, that's why we want to come in," said Hermione, addressing the portrait calmly.

"Aha! Milady, forsooth! I defy thee for a yeasty, folly-fallen flax-wench!"

"Sir Cadogan, have we done something to offend you? What's happened to the Fat Lady?"

"The doughty damsel? The full-gorged, pink paunchette? Chivalry forbids me to divulge the details of that fine lady's toilette, but I have it from rumour's lofty lips that she is - and, prithee youngstrels, keep it close – e'en now absorbed in shiny happenstance."

"What _are_ you talking about?" Harry couldn't be bothered to enter into conversation with the picture. The knight leaned precariously across the neck of the stumpy pony and lowered his voice.

"For all that thou art a craven, mammering, milk-livered, minnow, I vouchsafe unto thee, she and the winsome Lady Violet are being re-varnished."

"Oh, right. Now will you practise your abuse on someone else and let us in, please?"

X X X

In the Common Room Harry threw himself down onto the sofa.

"That picture's getting worse!" he exclaimed irritably. "What kind of a stupid password is 'Beef-witted bum-bailey', for God's sake? I bet McGonagall will have something to say about that."

"Didn't she have to authorise it? At least she's got a sense of humour! Unlike some people I could mention. Don't be such a grump, Harry. Sir Cadogan's just bored. He's had all Christmas to think up those new insults - you could try being more appreciative. Though 'yeasty' is a bit unpleasant. Never been called that before. What is a flax-wench, anyway? I'll have to look it up." Hermione was being unusually tolerant - etymological novelty serving to dilute the offensiveness. "Oh look - the house elves have sent up tea. That's nice. Want some?"

"Haven't those house elves ever heard of Butterbeer? Or has that piss-artist Winky drunk it all?" gloomed Harry, accepting a mug nonetheless.

"You're welcome!"

"What? Oh, yeahsorrythanks."

"So, Harry, what are we going to do? It's a bit dull with nobody else here. Have you finished your holiday assignments?" She had pulled what looked like a new reading list out of her pocket and was skimming through the titles. "We could always make a start on some of these books for next term - get ahead of the game…"

"You _are_ joking?" Harry never failed to be alarmed by Hermione's diligence. His face had assumed the sulky, aggrieved expression that, Hermione now recognised, often heralded a complaint about his father. She was not wrong. "It's so unfair!" he burst out. "He's gone swanning off to the cottage and we have to stay here, stuck indoors, not even allowed to go into the grounds. Why can't we go to Hogsmeade?"

"He's just being protective, Harry. Taking precautions."

"Precautions? There's being careful and there's being bloody paranoid - we can look after ourselves. Why can't he _ever_ get that?" Same old complaint.

"You'd be paranoid, Harry, if you'd nearly been… if, um, you'd been attacked. He's probably still in shock. We don't even know if it's safe for him to be at the cottage… For all we know, there could be - " She stopped, mid-sentence, her body tensing, narrowing her eyes and squinting into the corner of the room. Then she lifted a finger to her lips and motioned Harry to keep very still. "There's something under the cupboard," she whispered.

"What sort of something?" Harry mouthed. The hairs on the back of his neck frosted with apprehension. He felt no twinges in his scar; the temperature in the room was comfortably warm; he heard no hissing death threats in his head. Hermione's eyes widened and she gave a tiny shake of her head.

"I don't know, but it's watching us. I saw it blink. Harry! What are you doing?"

For he had rolled off the sofa onto his hands and knees and was creeping on all fours towards the cupboard, head low to the floor.

"Well, if it's blinking that means you've seen it's eyes, so it can't be a Basilisk or a Dementor, and it's not likely to be a Boggart otherwise you'd be having the heebie-jeebies about exam grades or something, and it's got to be small if it's under there, so…"

"So, what? Oh, do be careful, Harry!"

"So I'm going to poke it with my wand and see what it does."

"You can't! It might be a Pixie, or a Gnome or an Imp or something. Or a Doxy - Harry, it might bite you. Or one of Hagrid's nasty animals – a Murtlap or a Red Cap or… or a Jarvey… You can't just_ poke_ it!" Hermione, she was embarrassed to admit afterwards, had climbed onto the sofa, an instinct for self-preservation compelling her to get off ground if there were minute, scuttling creatures on the loose. Her eyes were still riveted to the dark corner.

"No? Wanna bet? Anyway, if it was a Jarvey it'd be swearing at us by now," Harry muttered, inching forwards. He stopped an arm's length from the cupboard and slowly extended his wand…

There was a shrill squeal and a croak, and out of the blackness came –

"**Trevor**?"

With a sigh of relief Harry let his forehead drop to the carpet, and he knelt, prostrate, while his heart stopped racing. Then he scooped up the disgruntled toad.

"But if Trevor's here, that means…"

x x x

"_Eighup_, Harry, Hermione!" Neville appeared at the doorway that led up to the dorm, and stumped into the Common Room. "What's amiss? Spun up and stuck fer bobbins (2)?"

"Huh?" Didn't anyone in this castle speak normal _English_ any more?

"Neville! What are you doing here? Nobody's due back until next week - hey, we found Trevor… Come and sit down - I'm afraid you'll have to squeeze in, next to Crookshanks - have some tea. Biscuit? It's all right - they're not Canary Creams. Harry and I were just saying it was getting dull in the castle on our own… So, how're you? What have you been up to since we saw you at the hospital? Did you have a good Christmas with your Gran?"

Neville slid Trevor carefully into his inside pocket and squatted on the edge of the chair-cushion, half on, half off. He wrapped his hands around the hot tea mug and nursed it pensively. The cat's ginger tail flicked in annoyance and the tipped ears flattened back at the ignominy of sharing space with this sweaty human and his toad. Neville perched; his thigh muscles were starting to quiver; the mug shook in his hand. Harry couldn't watch.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Neville, shift the wretched cat. Sorry, Hermione, but unless Nev's got legs like an Olympic skier, he'll never keep up that position."

Sensing a more determined incursion, Crookshanks took the initiative and stood up, arching his back, stretching. Aiming a haughty, yellow, disdainful glare at Neville, he jumped down and stalked away, bottle-brush tail erect, dignified to the last.

Hermione noticed how Neville slumped himself more fully into the depths of the squashy armchair. He looked pleased to see them, but there was something slightly limp and faded about him today - he seemed washed-out as though he had been once too often through the Dolly Tub, scrubbed thoroughly against an unforgiving washboard and repeatedly mangled. He did not look like a boy who has just returned to school after a jolly Christmas holiday.

"Neville, is everything all right?" she asked.

Neville drew in a long, deep breath, his cheeks puffing out and growing chubbier and pinker until he began to bear a disconcerting resemblance to Dudley Dursley. Then he exhaled slowly, deflating back into himself.

"Ah'm fair worn out!" he declared with a sigh. He emptied his mug with a swig which ended in a splutter. "Ugh, Hermione - this tae's like pinklewater!"

Harry peered doubtfully into his own mug as if half-expecting a scalded pinkle to come crawling out and nip him on the nose.

"Neville, why - " he began. He could feel Hermione's warning glare, severe with political correctness, but he wasn't going to tread on eggshells just for Neville.

"Why are you talking like that? You sound all… …all '_ecky-thump'_…"

"Harry!" Hermione was scrupulously outraged. "If Neville wants to speak in a Lancashire dialect as an expression of his regional identity, or as a demonstration of his pride in his Northern origins, then we've no right to make fun of him. We should be supporting him, not undermining his cultural heritage."

She gave a brisk nod to end her little speech, satisfied that she had clinched the issue before anybody took offence. Looking to the boys for some sort of acknowledgement, she was piqued to catch Harry and Neville exchanging a circus of 'snooty-tooty', 'hoity-toity'faces at her expense.

"Hey - do that one again, Nev - you went completely cross-eyed just then," laughed Harry.

"Eh lad, tha sken (3) like a basket o' whelks!" giggled Neville in his broadest 'Lanky', grinning and looking considerably more cheerful than when he'd come in. "Ee by gum, ecky peck, shape yersen else al purr thee wi' mi clog - tha's sat 'ere like a piffy on a toadstool…(4)" he chortled.

"Well, now you're just being silly!" snorted Hermione. She would have flounced out in a huff, but there didn't seem to be much point - there was no one else to talk to in the castle apart from ghosts and elves and besides, Neville was definitely behaving oddly and she wanted to get to the bottom of it. It wasn't like him to be interesting. And after all the trauma of the last few days, it was a relief to have someone other than Professor Snape to worry about.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," Neville said in a voice approaching normal, the accent flat but intelligible, though sounding rather more nasal than usual. "It comes of spending too much time with Great Uncle Algie. First thing he does is slip me a _Lingo Lozenge_… It kind of makes me drop back into talking 'Northern' when I'm there. Takes a while to wear off. I don't rightly mind - anything for a quiet life. He wants me to be true to my roots, you see. E's got a bit of a thing abaht it." He relapsed back into himself, subdued and reflective, his smooth cup-cake face now pocked with grievances. "E's on at me all the time; never lets up. It's like, '_Give over mitherin' - th'art nobbut a big jessy'_,(5)" Neville quoted sadly, as if he suspected it might be true.

"We thought you were staying at your Gran's - like you always do," said Hermione, not daring to speculate what might have been going on.

Neville's shoulders sagged even further - his Gran wasn't a happy topic of conversation either, apparently.

"You know we'll winkle it out of you sooner or later," coaxed Hermione at her most persuasive. "You might as well tell us now - before we apply the thumbscrews or would you prefer a quick _Tarantellegra_ or maybe… the dreaded 'tickle-torture'?" She knew Neville hated being tickled. "So, what's up, Neville?"

"Well…" He was rubbing dejectedly at his fingertips which appeared to be an unfortunate, olivey shade of green. "Well, I don't rightly like to say this, Harry, what with him being your dad an' all - "

"Snape?" exclaimed Hermione. "We might have known! What's he done to you now?"

"Nowt worse than usual," said Neville, phlegmatically. "It was my end of term report. When my Gran read it she got really cratchy (6). Said I was a disgrace to the family and that the name of Longbottom would become a standing joke, and that it was an insult to the memory of - you know - of my mum and dad."

"Not good," commiserated Harry, painfully familiar with the concept of upholding wizard family honour. "But you were a hero at the end of last term, Nev - I know it was your wand that started all the trouble, but it wasn't your fault - it was that creep Malfoy, sabotaging everything. Surely they're not blaming you for that?"

Hermione also leaped to her friend's defence.

"I think it's really mean of Snape to have given you a bad report - after all that work you put in trying to find the cure. It's worse than mean, it's vindictive! He's always got it in for you! I've a good mind to go and tell him so!"

Neville, however, didn't need rescuing just yet.

"No, Hermione. It wasn't so much what Snape put - it was more how my Gran took it."

"So what did he say then?" Harry and Hermione spoke simultaneously.

"It weren't anything really. He said, '_Mr Longbottom's return to the Potions class has been a salutary experience for us all._'"

That silenced them. No one knew quite what to make of it.

"That doesn't actually sound so bad," said Hermione slowly. "It's not as though he said you were hopeless, or threatened to have you expelled, is it?"

Frowning, Neville nodded back at her.

"Exactly. But my Gran got the idea that I had to spend the whole of my holiday practising potions, and as if that weren't bad enough, after Christmas she suddenly cooked up this scheme to send me to stay with Great Uncle Algie. Something about needing a male role model…"

Secretly, Hermione agreed that Neville could do with a little toughening up - he owed it to himself to be more assertive, and to have more confidence in his abilities - but she doubted whether packing him off into the clutches of an uncouth relative was the answer.

"And then," Neville continued with a colossal sniff, "yesterday she got an owl from Snape…"

"No!"

"Aye, she did. And it put her in all of a pother - he said I had to come back to school early."

"To catch up on your Potions?"

" 'Appen so."

"Blimey! What a miserable swine! Ruining your holiday!"

Harry came out in sympathy and felt justified in slating his father on Neville's behalf. He and Snape both had the unsettling habit of divorcing events that occurred in school from their personal lives. Hermione was less quick to condemn the Potions master - in the midst of all his own troubles it was, she thought, very _dedicated_ of him to be considering the welfare of any student, let alone Neville.

Neville sniffed again. His nose seemed to be completely bunged-up, yet with a persistent drip. Hermione wondered if he had been crying. The problem, however, as Neville endeavoured to explain, could be traced back to his Potions practice.

"Me nose 'as never been the same since Dolohov broke it last summer. I think when Pomfrey patched it up she made it even more sensitive than it were afore. And now, when I do Potions… It's my Gran's fault really - she had me working with that many recipes, and trying them out on myself and then having to brew up the antidotes… I've been _Shrunk_, _Enlarged_, put to _Sleep_, _Woken-up_… I've been given _Aches_ and _Acne_, _Boils, Blisters_ and _Buboes, Cricks, Cramps_ and _Colic_… I've induced _Drowsiness, Eccentricity, Energy, Flatulence, Gratuitous Generosity, Hiccoughs, Invisibility_…"

"Wow! You've done _Invisibility_? That's really advanced." Harry was most impressed. Neville waffled his nose sideways, retrenching…

"I'm still working on that one…"

Hermione was growing anxious that he had ploughed his way through the entire, alphabetical potions index. And if he was receiving all this private tuition from Snape too, he might get really good… That was a worrying thought.

"It wasn't so bad until I was practising the _Boil Cure Potion_, and I added the Porcupine Quills and this whopping cloud of green smoke came out… It got right up my nose - stung like billy-oh - and made my eyes water and…"

"Oh, Neville, not again!" Hermione despaired, but felt that perhaps her classroom supremacy was not under threat after all. "That's first year work - didn't you learn _anything_ from your mistakes? That's precisely what you did wrong before…"

"I remember that _now_." Neville was on his dignity. "Anyway, then my Gran decided I was looking a touch peaky, so she started dosing me with all these concoctions out of _Old Wives' Herbal_ - By 'eck! If you think Snape's potions are vile… She gave me a mustard bath one day and my skin went all itchy and yellow. I tell thee, if I weren't badly to start with, by the time she'd finished wi' me I'd welly woven mi piece…(7) Ooh er, sorry - there I go again! In some ways it was a relief to go to Great Uncle Algie's."

_And in other ways it wasn't._

Ever since Neville had been a baby, his Great Uncle had delighted in putting him through his magical paces. He had a theory that magic was like a muscle - in order to develop it needed to be flexed and exercised; the greater the challenge, the stronger the magical ability would become. If that were true, reflected Neville glumly, a few weeks with Algie and he'd be as powerful as Dumbledore!

The trouble was, 'challenge' to Algie encompassed all manner of obstacles, threats or difficulties, the more life-threatening the better. When Neville's gran had suggested that, as a gesture of gratitude and appeasement, it might be useful to take Professor Snape a present - some unusual, freshly caught potions ingredients, for example - Uncle Algie had been alarmingly enthusiastic. And Neville had felt a chill of foreboding…

Since retirement, Algie's interests had led him more and more often to the coast where he would meet up with his friends - an assortment of ancient but irreverent wizard cronies. Shuffling along the sea-front together, like down-at-heel relics from some wartime travelling repertory theatre, they would relive their glory days, over a shared bag of steamed cockles, tossing the empty shells skywards and shooting them down with their wands like miniature clays. On warm days they might conjure deck-chairs on the sand and entertain themselves with a spot of harmless Muggle-baiting, the favourites being to divert Frisbees and send them skimming out to sea, or to stampede the plodding, moth-eaten string of donkeys with a couple of strategic _Stinging_ spells…

So they'd taken a row-boat into the bay, much to the concern of the hire-boat attendant, who hadn't even been open for business on that blustery, Boxing Day morning, and clearly thought them insane, insisting that it was more than his job's worth to let them have a craft in this weather. Mumbling something which sounded oddly to Neville like 'wigwams'(8), Uncle Algie had clasped the attendant's hand and shaken it heartily, until a mazey, glazed expression came into the Muggle's eyes and he fetched them the oars and removable rowlocks without further protest. Algie wasn't much of an oarsman. He powered the boat by dipping his wand over the side and casting some form of the_ Reductor_ curse which sent them scudding over the waves in erratic bursts, leaving a trail of stunned fish floating in their wake.

Despite feeling increasingly sea-sick as the little boat bucked and bounced, Neville had managed to gather a whole jar of mucoid slime from a worm-pink, wriggling, slip-knotted Hagfish, as well as the defensively expelled entrails of three sea-cucumbers.

"Getting the sharks' teeth was a lot trickier," he explained with false modesty, savouring the look of admiration on Harry's face. "Every time I tried to get it with a '_Stupefy!_', the spell missed. It took me ages to work out that it was getting refracted by the water. I thought I was just a lousy shot. And I wasn't used to Algie's wand either…"

His Great Uncle had scoffed, but Neville had stuck to his refusal to use his own wand, fearing Ministry repercussions.

"I suppose I ought to take the stuff to Snape now, so he can pickle it, or eat it, or whatever he does, before it goes off. Pongs like a dead dragon already! Is he down in the dungeons do you know?"

Neville made a half-hearted move to get up, very reluctant to make this particular goodwill gesture. There was a silence as both Harry and Hermione waited, expecting the other to answer. Then they both spoke at once.

"I think he's gone to Snape Cottage today," said Hermione.

"Did you hear he was attacked by another Death Eater?" said Harry.

Neville promptly settled back down in his chair…

**End of Chapter**

1 Lancashire - The Harry Potter Lexicon suggests that Neville's family hails from Lancashire. I have merely built on this.

2 Spun up and stuck fer bobbins - at a loose end. A lot of Lancashire sayings are based on cotton mill terminology.

3 Tha sken like – you are as cross-eyed as

4 shape yersen – pull yourself together; purr thee – hit you; piffy - pixie

5 'give over… jessy' – stop whining; you're just a big cissy

6 cratchy – irritable, grumpy

7 badly – ill; welly – well nigh; woven mi piece – finished (my piece of work) i.e. come to the end of life

8 'Wigwams' - from a Lanky retort 'Wigwams for lame ducks' meaning 'never you mind'…

**Next Chapter: INTO DARKNESSE. Cut back to Snape. Returning to the burnt out remains of Snape Cottage, Snape has to deal with old demons...**


	10. INTO DARKNESSE'

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: Sorry for the delay in updating. Haven't been able to log on to FFnet for several days. Hope it's worth the wait!**

**Glad the Lancastrian Neville didn't freak you all out. There will be more Neville in later chapters.**

**Vert: Hope I answered your questions.**

**OK, back to Snape… He returns to Snape Cottage.**

**Chapter 10 : 'INTO DARKNESSE' **(1)

The colour black would be forever associated in his mind with that smell: the charred reek of destruction. Snape was no stranger to the smell of burning. It infiltrated the senses, lingering long after the visual image had crumbled to ash. For years it had taken only the faintest whiff of carbon to evoke in him the nauseating tang of crisply singed flesh, accompanied by the screams of nameless, cringing victims. And now that same trigger would summon the vision of this coal black cremation. Would he now wake in the night, in the pitch dark, with the scent of soot in his nostrils?

It hung in the air, tar-thick and caustic, the stench of smoke, an acrid, enveloping smog that impregnated his clothing with its clogging taint and stung at the back of his throat. The smell of death by fire, the smell - if one wished to be melodramatic, he thought sourly - of Hell. His home reduced to a grotesque charcoal caricature. Polished wood scorched to jagged, blackened, unrecognisable stumps; fabric shrivelled to flapping shreds, funereal weeds; and all smoke-washed, in ever intensifying shades, black on black.

Snape surveyed the burned-out remains of the cottage in cold silence, his expression closed and unreadable. His dark eyes flicked over the wreckage, item by incinerated item, assimilating the totality of the damage, cataloguing the loss. It was a vacated shell. He could turn his back on it, Charm it into invisible unplotability, cast '_Deleodomum!_' and eradicate all traces, finishing the job that the Death Eaters and their Raggnerite(2) mercenary thugs had so crudely begun. The thought was tempting.

Decamping to the cottage had, all those years ago, been a temporary measure, a stop-gap, an escape. With the Manor practically under siege by Ministry officials, the investigation squad from Magical Forensics and the carrion-crew from the _Daily Prophet_, the cottage had offered a refuge. Racked with guilt and grief over the death of his parents and fearing the exposure of his Dark connections, the young Snape had sought sanctuary there. Constructing wards of pentagonal impenetrability he had slunk into his rustic bolt-hole to sit out the storm of notoriety. Even when the flurry of publicity had died down and the enquiries had reported their grisly conclusions, the bodies had been interred and the building cleansed of all remaining Dark spell residue, Snape had been reluctant to move back to the echoing, empty grandeur of the Manor. The simplicity of life at the cottage, the enforced deprivation - at first part of a bitter, self-recriminatory penance – had become a solace, then a habit and later a necessity. If his current life at Hogwarts was deliberately solitary, at the cottage it bordered on the reclusive.

Over the years he had made some refinements – the conversion of the basement into his laboratory being the most obvious change - but he had jealously preserved its seclusion and privacy. The very solitude sustained him. And it remained a refuge. In adulthood he still shied from the demands of the abandoned estate and the Manor, the dust-sheeted responsibilities, dormant, awaiting his return.

He stood for a long time in the doorway, rigid, straight-backed as a headstone, tension betrayed in the grim set of his jaw, hard and angular, calculating, knowing that his next action would be decisive and irrevocable. He was loath to cross the threshold, to desecrate the pyre of his past. Was it time to walk away, to let the dark shroud rest over the last sixteen years?

Or he could restore the cottage. Structurally, the stone walls were still sound; the roof was partially intact - the timber joists were cracked and unsafe and would need replacing; some tiles had slipped and fallen but were salvageable. The contents however (though there was little left to justify that title) – his furniture, his personal belongings, his books – were ruined or fire-damaged beyond repair. Or so he hoped…

It was fortunate that he set scant store by material possessions. There was little that could lay claim to being of significance or sentimental value. Of the few objects that warranted that description, the two most important to him - his Pensieve and Lily's book – had both, coincidentally, been safe in his office at Hogwarts at the time of the fire. His wand had been, as always, with him. As for the rest…

In the last, desperate moments before the flames and smoke had finally driven him back, he had reinforced the protective spells on the basement, adding a _Non-Flammability Charm_ to the security ward he had previously posted on the door. He had safeguarded the animals - his specimens and (he hesitated to acknowledge the term) his pets. Braque and Quig had made their own escapes. And Harry? Snape's overwhelming priority that night had been to remove Harry from danger. It chilled him to realise how urgently he had responded to the instinctual, parental imperative.

xxx

Snape picked his way across the room, treading with precision, stepping over the heat-twisted wreckage. Crushed underfoot the cinders popped and crunched, and brittle twigs of a former existence snapped, recharging the dank air with peat-bog pungency. Wand-water fired to extinguish the flames had mingled with the soot, covering everything in a damp, textured, smoke-black film. By the bookcase - what used to be the bookcase - he stopped, his eyes scouring the smouldered mound at his feet where, three nights ago, the shelves had collapsed, crashing their flammable, inflammatory volumes onto the floor.

"_Intacto!_" The _Cohesion Charm_ settled over the pile. Under its fixative force the wispy, feather-light sheets of paper-thin carbon held their shape, setting solid where they had fallen, like the ghastly, ash-baked victims of Vesuvius. Bending down Snape began to work, sorting through the rubble, prising apart the book briquettes and scrutinising each one with the care of an archaeologist examining the remains of a desecrated, ancient tomb. Some he could reject immediately because of their size; some were too badly damaged for the charm to have had any effect; others were petrified slabs of literary coal. Here and there a Spell Jacket had protected a book from the worst ravages of the flames, and its charred wads projected from the mass like granite outcrops in an otherwise featureless desert. These he put to one side. Their numbers mounted slowly, building a low wall of tarnished reference, dark and dangerous.

Snape knew exactly what he was looking for - what he didn't know was whether it was still there or whether the arsonists had claimed their deadly trophy. He was angry with himself: if only he'd thought about this on the night of the fire, he could have destroyed the damn, damning book with a single curse, dispelling all doubt. But at that time he'd had no idea that Lucius - supposedly of no threat in Azkaban – had masterminded the attack. He'd had no reason to make the connection with the dusty spell-book, unread and long-forgotten, relegated to unreachable obscurity on the topmost shelf.

It had been no more than a casual comment, all those years ago, when Lucius, his friend and mentor, had lent him his rare manuscript '_Into Darknesse_'. Denounced and banned as heretical in the _Malleus Maleficarum(__3_, this text had even earned a reputation in the Muggle world. Flattered and with the impressionable zeal of a recent recruit, Snape had lingered over the thick parchment pages, revelling in the age old devilry of its Dark lore. The very names had thrilled him: the _Carnifex Curse_, _Charon's Charm_ (4). Fascinated he had turned to the chapter on _Scelerosi Spells_ - here was an unimaginable catalogue of macabre magic, inspirational malice. He remembered laughing with Lucius to note that the _Humavi Hex_ (useful for burying one's victim alive), had been meticulously cross-referenced with _Syrtinex!_ (Death by Quicksand).

"Much of it is hokum, Severus, but there's some gold amongst the dross - and not Leprechaun gold either!"

In the margin next to _Vermiscutum!_ someone had quilled its more common name: _Ward Worm_. Snape had scanned the formula, already impatient to put the old incantation into practice. This one was a saboteur's dream (if it worked): slow-acting but undetectable it was supposed to infiltrate and undermine a range of_ Securing Spells_ from Locking Charms to protective Wards. Peering over his shoulder, Lucius had caught the direction of his gaze:

"_Ward Worm_, eh? Wonder if we could burrow our way into Hogwarts with that!" he'd joked, drawing Snape away, his mind on more immediate evil.

A throw-away remark, instantly discarded. But, years later, Snape had taken the precaution of transferring it to his Pensieve…

…where it had remained, unremarked, until the day that someone - no prizes for guessing who, he thought wryly - had violated Pensieve privacy and stolen the code keys to the perimeter wards of the Snape Estate. And at the same time the thief had scooped out a mindful of memories of Snape's early days with Lucius…

Dumbledore might view the latest attacks as opening gambits in a renewed campaign against the Order, but to Snape they had all the hallmarks of a personal vendetta. Of Lucius, embittered and desperate, plotting revenge. Plotting the raid on Snape Cottage as an amusement, another happy thought to sustain him and the remaining Dementors for a week or so. The more he deliberated about it, the more Snape had become convinced that the original target that night had been neither Harry nor himself _specifically_, but rather his property in general. If this were another of the Dark Lord's attempts to injure Harry, the plan would have been more subtle, deviously engineered. This plan had been too crude, too dependent on coincidence to be sure of success. The thugs had been intent on vandalism not murder. And retrieving the manuscript? Pure opportunism! Lucius had never bothered about it before. He would not have known that it was kept at the cottage. No, decided Snape, the information had come to Lucius by chance. It was not even certain that he had acted on it. Yet the memory had been missing from the Pensieve; Snape couldn't afford to take the risk.

If, however, the Dark Lord were planning an assault on Hogwarts now or at any time in the future, the old magic spells might indeed prove invaluable. Snape had to ascertain whether or not the Death Eaters were now in possession of the ancient volume.

All this anxiety over a book. Snape straightened up for a moment's respite, flexing his shoulders and wincing as the stiffness in his neck suddenly arc-ed down his spine. The toxic, smut-laden air was stinging his eyes, giving him a headache. He needed to take a breather, to get some fresh oxygen into his lungs. He turned towards the buckled doorway. Then he saw it. On the floor, slightly to the left of the door, half-buried in ash and filth, the square-ish, leather-bound tome was unmistakable. He must have practically stepped over it when he came in. The momentum of the falling shelves alone would never have flung it so far - had it then been carried there and, for some reason, dropped? Weighty and substantial, the volume appeared to be intact - Snape had not expected the Cohesion Charm to extend so far. Or were those pages preserved by sorcery? Fingering his wand he approached warily, as though the abandoned book might, like Fluffy, leap up and bite him on the leg. But it lay inanimate and inert. Squatting down to take a closer look, Snape felt some of his old awe rekindling: this book was unique - it would be criminal to destroy it. He reached out to lift it… and at his touch the ancient manuscript crumbled to dust.

Snape pulled back, startled, unnerved, smacking away the ash and staring at his palms in disgust as though a funeral urn had been emptied into his hands. Suddenly he was finding it impossible to breathe, and his heart was clamouring in his chest. Four strides took him to the back door. Wrenching it open he swept outside and inhaled a draught of cool, clean morning air. The flicker of panic had left him feeling foolish and undignified. After all this time, sixteen years of denial and strenuous rectitude, he was still susceptible…

**End of Chapter.**

1 'Into Darknesse' : First reference to this text appears in LP2 'Snape's Confession

2 Raggnerite - vandalistic follower of 17thC Welsh rebel wizard, Cribyn Raggner. (cf. Lost Perspective 6: 'Deck the Halls')

3 Malleus Maleficarum – ( c. 1486) Definitive Muggle text in condemnation of witchcraft used as the 'handbook' for the European anti-witch Inquisitions of the 15th and 16th Centuries.

4 Charon: the ferryman of Hades

**Next Chapter: LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD. Hermione has a theory**


	11. LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7 **

PAYBACK TIME

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: The next few chapters cut fairly rapidly between the kids and Snape… A little more Neville here. I always think he is an underused resource in canon.**

**Chapter 11:LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD**

"…and I'd got him at wand-point, backed up against the wall, and he was begging me not to curse him…" Harry, flushed with retrospective adventuring, affected not to notice as Hermione heaved her eyes in disapproval. He couldn't help himself - Neville was such an absorbent audience.

"Who was it? Did you get a good look? Was it one of the guys who was at the Department of Mysteries?" Neville questioned him eagerly, his own gripes briefly forgotten.

"Mask." Harry extemporised. "Couldn't see his face."

Disgusted, Hermione picked up the copy of the Daily Prophet and began to turn the pages noisily. If Harry enjoyed lying to Neville that was his business, but she wanted nothing to do with it. Nor, however, did she want to accuse him outright and make a scene. Seemingly entranced by the 'Cookery at Christmas' feature (_'Have you Cooked your Goose? 101 ways to rehash turkey and game left-overs'_) she was, nonetheless, listening intently.

"So Snape's OK?" asked Neville.

"Yeah, a few scratches and bruises. As I said, I interrupted the guy - "

"Then I don't get it," said Neville, sounding puzzled.

Hermione eyed him over the top of her paper. She had gone very still. Suspense caught her breath and twisted it into ropes around her chest. She was waiting for Neville to continue, willing him to have picked up the anomalies in Harry's action-packed fiction. As yet she hadn't dared voice her suspicions to anyone, not even Harry, and the strain of keeping the secret was gnawing at her like toothache.

"Why didn't he kill him? The Death Eater? Why try to strangle someone when you could do the job quicker and quieter with a Curse? Why take the risk?" Neville pondered out loud. "It's risky enough breaking into St. Mungo's as it is, and getting to Snape's room, but… Strangling? No, I don't buy it." He was shaking his head slowly. "I mean, what if he'd woken up - well, he probably did - but he could have fought back, couldn't he? Snape's pretty strong…"

_Not that night he wasn't_, thought Hermione, but in principle she agreed. She was anxious for Neville to take it further.

"And then there were the scratches," she hinted.

"Aye, Harry said."

"But Harry hardly saw them! They were really deep, Neville. Vicious. What sort of Death Eater claws a man across the face? That's not the way they work."

She had lifted the lid now and one by one her slanderous assumptions were clambering out of the box and insinuating themselves into the conversation.

"Hermione, what are you getting at?" A short while ago Harry had been worried that she might trash his story in front of Neville and show him up. She'd spared him that, but now there seemed to be something more sinister going on. She was agitated and nervous, and there was that infuriating, patronising note in her voice that told him she'd spotted some glaringly obvious error which he, in his crass, inadequate, male imperviousness, had overlooked.

"What?" he demanded.

The newspaper slipped off her knee, its pages fanning out onto the floor and, automatically, she knelt to gather it back together. She didn't answer at once, but went on lining up the sheets of print, patting the edges into position, smoothing and folding. Suddenly she looked up at him, her eyes imploring and fearful.

"Didn't it seem odd to you - the way Snape was talking to Dumbledore that night? When we Portkeyed to his office?"

"Odd? I didn't notice anything."

"Well, you were half asleep. But it was like they weren't telling us everything…"

"There's nothing odd about that!" _When did adults ever tell you any more than they thought you needed to know?_

"Harry, I'm serious. Alright then, don't you think it's strange that no one from the Ministry has been to interview us? Either of us? And has Snape spoken to you about it - asked you to go through your version of events again? Well, has he? No. And what Neville said just now - why didn't the 'assassin' use the Killing Curse? He could have murdered Snape in his sleep and disappeared, and none of us would have been any the wiser."

"'Appen he didn't have his wand," put in Neville, "or could be he didn't use it because…" he floundered for a reason, "…because he went in to… to talk to him? Maybe he wasn't going to kill him, but things got nasty…"

Hermione was nodding vigorously at Neville.

"Harry, I think it's possible Snape may have _known_ the attacker."

Neville appeared to be counting backwards on his fingers, his brow puckered. Hermione could see him hovering over the scraps of information, turning them over and around in his mind and eventually placing them dubiously into the awful picture. The painstaking, jigsaw process irritated Harry to distraction.

"What are you saying?" he cried angrily. "That Snape's still a Death Eater? That he was having a secret meeting? _In hospital_? That's rubbish! You're both mad! Didn't you see what they did to him?"

"The dates fit," Neville stated, ignoring him. "…for the moon. And then there's the scratches…"

"Harry - " Hermione was trying to be calm and rational, but her voice was shaking. "Don't you remember how Hestia told us that the Raggnerites went on the rampage on the first full moon after the solstice? And remember how bright it was that night when we were flying over the moors?"

"So?" What stuck in Harry's mind about that flight was how pissed he'd been with Snape for dragging him away from all the excitement… and how frozen his hands had been… He hadn't been gazing at the moon!

"What if… what if it was a werewolf who attacked Snape?" Hermione whispered her suspicion, praying that Harry would quash it with some irrefutable counter-argument, some proof that she was hopelessly, horribly mistaken. Something he'd neglected to mention so far. But his expression became scared and hostile.

"I'm not listening to this. It's sick!"

"You've got to listen. Do you think I'm happy about it either? But it would explain why Snape and Dumbledore have been hushing it up. And why there was no magic, and the throttling…"

"And the cloak?" Harry spat. "How often have you seen a werewolf in a cloak? This isn't Little Red Riding Hood, you know. And how did he get away? Do werewolves Disapparate? Don't they _bite_?"

He didn't want to believe her; he deliberately refused to understand the implications. Hermione knew she would have to spell it out.

"Oh Harry, "she sighed, "What if it were Remus?"

Even Neville started, and he had guessed what was coming.

"Remus!"

"Think about it - he would have been starting to change back by then. Perhaps he thought he was OK - he might have thought he'd be alright visiting Snape… Or maybe he needed more Potion or something. I don't know. Harry, don't you see…?"

Harry didn't want to see. He was categorical, obstinate, terrified lest it were true.

"All I can see is that you've lost it. It can't have been Remus. He wouldn't… It just can't. Anyway, Snape said it was a Death Eater."

_No, he didn't, Hermione thought. He never actually said that. _

_**End of Chapter**_

_**Next Chapter: TO THE MANOR BORN. Snape returns to the scene of his childhood.**_


	12. TO THE MANOR BORN

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**Reviews: Yeah, I did say this was a Snape-Neville fic, so I'm trying to use him as part of the detective process. There are clues in the earlier chapters, but it probably only really clicks into place if you re-read it once you know what was really going on... Better not say too much.**

**Now we cut back to Snape. **

**  
**

**Chapter 12:TO THE MANOR BORN**

From the cottage to the Manor was a brisk, twenty-minute walk and Snape was feeling warm and invigorated. Unusually for him he had paused only briefly on the high plateau before taking the track down the far side of the hill towards the great house. Branching off the path, he scrambled the last, steep fifty yards down to level ground, actually enjoying the exhilaration - the relief of finding and destroying the fateful book had left him light-headed and reckless. He needed to press on before his resolution failed. Already today he had tackled one ghost from his past; now he was going to confront another.

The approach to the Manor at this time of year was dreary and uninviting. A treacherous, brown sludge of winter-rotted leaves coated the walkways and green-slimed flagstones, clogging in the cracks and corners, layering the tangled borders, trapped amongst the stark stems and spiky autumn die-back like krill caught in baleen. In a few months, Snape knew, rampant weeds would have reclaimed the driveway, repopulated the stonework, thriving on neglect.

Shameful neglect. But there was no one to reproach him for his negligence - except himself. And he had learned long ago to co-exist with his conscience.

Sure-footed, Snape strode to the top of the slippery, stone steps which led up to the massive, oak portal and raised his wand.

"Ouvrez la p- " Then he faltered, letting the wand drop to his side. Did he really want to do this? The flush of energy and determination evaporated into the barley-water sunshine and he hesitated, reluctant to break the seal and open the door.

Why was he here? Now? Today? So, the cottage was temporarily uninhabitable - that was an inconvenience, nothing more. Dourly pragmatic in a crisis, Snape was not given to hysterics; he had seen worse. A number of artefacts had been burned - he would not weep for them. He was neither homeless nor destitute; his quarters at Hogwarts were adequate. As far as the Manor went those were ancillary issues. The fire had changed nothing with regard to his ancestral home. There was little here for him but solitude on a grandiose scale. He would rattle around in the place like Moody's eyeball, constantly looking over his shoulder, checking behind him for lurking dangers in the dark.

When he was a child he had assumed - as children do – that Snape Manor would be his home forever… but that was before… Before he had learned to hate the place. Hate? No, too emotive. Before he had amassed his portfolio of negative associations… that was more like it.

Snape looked up, his eyes skating across the stately Elizabethan façade. It was just a building. A fine example, he was reliably informed by people who valued such things. It was not the building itself that depressed him. He could not blame bricks and stonework for the oppressive weight of obligation that enveloped him whenever he crossed the threshold.

Everything in the house accused him of dereliction of duty - from the cobweb-garlanded candelabra to the mice nests in the tapestry cushions. The portraits - generations of scowling, hook-nosed Snapes - would rouse themselves from their long torpor as he walked by, to doff their hats, greeting him with an air of expectancy which soured rapidly to a cynical and disappointed adieu.

Why was he here? Hovering at the door of his own property - plunged into a brooding reverie? Only minutes ago he had been feeling dynamic and assertive. This place always had this affect on him; it robbed him of impetus, and substituted inertia.

The Manor was a mausoleum to the past, and he had neither the power nor the inclination to restore the dead. It had been lifeless for too long, he reflected, - since before the time of his parents' 'accidental' death.(1) Since the time his mother had retreated into her Potion-induced fantasy land, leaving them mourning her loss in her lifetime. It was not often that Snape allowed his thoughts to turn to his mother, but at one time her presence had permeated the Manor like an exotic French perfume, spicy and exciting. Now the empty halls echoed with her absence.

He couldn't enter the ante-room or mount the staircase without being confronted with some evidence of her influence: the bronze bust of Hecate in the niche on the first landing; the huge, ornately framed over-mantel mirror in the study, transported with much difficulty from her uncle's chateau in the Languedoc, which proved to have acquired a taste for Rabelais - it would comment on one's coiffeur in bawdy French and make lewd insinuations about house-guests which, luckily, few visitors to the Manor were able to translate. After a few years it ceased to matter - no guests were invited. Then there was the Paris porcelain, the Murano glass and ormolu vases in the drawing room, the vibrantly coloured Turkish rugs, an inlaid, enamel and lacquer Chinese cabinet, Koala-skin cushions, a Tiffany-style lantern made out of Paua shell from New Zealand, and the recurring image of her pet pug dog, Rigolo, whose grumpy, crumpled face growled out of more than one dusty picture frame.

From the artistic treasures to the whimsical souvenirs of her travels, it all testified to her eclectic taste, her vivacity and joie de vivre. Snape's earliest memories of her were of a magnificent, creative creature, continentally passionate, impetuous and unpredictable. The formal gardens had been her personal project. She would sweep through the terraces like a magical Marie-Antoinette, the grumbling gardener hobbling to keep up with her, physically and mentally, as she dictated increasingly ambitious plans for this or that shrub, this tree, that vista… Under her direction the grounds had come to resemble a miniature Versailles. Strolling along the manicured topiary walk, a small, trusting Snape trotting by her side, she would suddenly whirl him around in a burst of exuberance:

"Ferme les yeux, Severus!" she would cry. "Et, voilà!" (2)

And he would open his eyes to see the immaculately symmetrical box hedges transfigured into wonderful green, leafy sphinxes, serpents, dragons…

Or else she would grow tired of the traditional, muted décor congenial to his father, and, with an elegant sweep of the wand, she would transform the dull oak panelling into richly gilded plasterwork, or add decorative, neo-Classical scenes in grisaille, or trompe l'oeil murals of places she had visited when she was a girl. Snape would never know, from one morning to the next, whether he would come downstairs to find himself in a Palladian palace or an Arabian souq. To a child of five it had been like living in a fairytale.

A fairytale without a happy ending.

He cherished the memories but they were corrupted now, spoiled and defiled. At what point had the vitality become violence, the charming eccentricity twisted into craziness? When had the singing turned into shouting? How had that vivacious, fun-loving woman warped into an addicted, vicious, scheming hag? It had sickened him, month by month, to witness the change from a laughing, gentle witch into something bestial - aggressive, abusive and extraordinarily strong. He had hated the madness in her. She would, he had thought, be better off dead. Evidently she had agreed with him.

Snape's schooldays had passed in an agony of anxiety lest someone at Hogwarts should discover the secret; he had kept to himself, shunned company, encouraged no confidences. It had to be James Potter, of all people, who stumbled on the truth. Stumbled on it? Extracted it under stolen _Veritaserum_. And Snape had endured Potter's taunts and ridicule until the day that arrogant, insensitive bully died. He could not find it in his heart to regret the death of James Potter. Others too had had their suspicions.

"There are some rum rumours going round, Severus - about your family," Lucius had said to him one afternoon. It had been the end of term, after NEWTs, and by then Snape's sights were set on greater challenges, nobler causes… He had denied the rumours adamantly. Only later did he realise that he was being vetted…

x x x

"Damn you, Lucius," he muttered out loud.

Was _that_ why he was here? Did he still, subconsciously, feel compelled to _prove_ himself to Malfoy? Was his impulse to reoccupy the Manor merely an act of self-assertion? In defiance of Malfoy?

Memories could be obliviated, furnishings replaced, colour schemes altered, Pureblood patrimonies reclaimed… Yet Snape had no desire to flaunt or even, really, to avail himself of the trappings of his inheritance. He was not Lucius. He couldn't help but compare himself to his old friend: Lucius had so naturally assumed the mantle of wealth and status; he had perfected the abuse of privilege while cultivating a veneer of respectability in ways which, at the time, had seemed admirable. Snape had strived to emulate him. Even later, after the disillusion had set in, Snape had still envied aspects of Lucius' life: his social poise, his single-mindedness, his family, his marriage, his child…

"Damn you!" said Snape again. _Lucius, you've smoked me out of my bolt-hole - what more do you want?_

Snape shuddered as a gust of chill wind snatched at his cloak. Pivoting on his heel he checked uneasily in all directions, just in case… then dismissed his apprehensions with a snort. Yet his heart was racing again. He half expected to catch sight of his mother's shimmering spectre, still hauntingly beautiful even in death; still murderously manic. Had he summoned her, unintentionally, with his thoughts? It was impossible. She was banished, eternally, to the Round Tower, warded with the most potent spells he knew. He was imagining things - today he was tense, jumpy; if he shut his eyes he could still feel the squeeze of bony fingers tightening on his throat…

He thrust his hands into his pockets, pulling his cloak more closely about him. It was a stance he abhorred and never failed to rebuke in his students. But the sun too had wrapped itself in a haze of pale lemon cloud and it was cold once you stopped walking. How long had he been standing on these steps deliberating with his doubts? It felt like a lifetime.

**End of Chapter.**

1 The story of Snape's mother's addiction to potions and subsequent suicide and murder of Snape's father is told in 'Snape's Confession' (Lost Perspective 2). I have tried to continue the French motif here (for the sake of consistency) but without making a thing of it.

2 Ferme les yeux… et voila! - Shut your eyes… ta da!

**Next Chapter: GREAT UNCLE ALGIE. Yep, Neville again. The family saga! I hope it explains alot.**


	13. GREAT UNCLE ALGIE

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**A/N: So we all want to discuss what's going on with Remus, right? Sorry! Not in this chapter... But there is more about Neville's miserable holiday.**

**Chapter 13:GREAT UNCLE ALGIE**

Harry hurled his half-eaten biscuit into the fire.

"It's not true, and I'm not going to discuss it. Got that? So either you talk about something else, or you can both sod off!"

But the thoughts of Remus were circling in their heads like a whole pack of prowling, hungry wolves - how could they possibly discuss anything else?

"We'll have to ask Snape when he gets back. Harry, you'll have to make him tell you - "

"I meant what I said, Hermione - drop it!" Fierce and frightened, Harry warned her off. The subject of Snape and Remus was fraught enough at the best of times - but now, to tread into that minefield of conflicting loyalties was to court disaster. Whichever way he stepped, another part of him would be blown to smithereens: his friendship with the werewolf, his faith in him as a flawed but fundamentally decent adult; or his uncertain, inexplicable loyalty to that difficult, unlovable man whom he was still learning, painfully, to regard as his father.

"Bladderwrack," snuffled Neville.

Harry switched his incomprehension to his classmate, seizing on the distraction. Even Neville couldn't be any more confusing than the supposedly sensible 'grown-ups' in his life. Or could he?

"_What?_"

"Aye, it's like a kelp forest down there - all round the underwater pier stanchions…"

"**What?** Neville, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Bladderwrack. It's a type of seaweed. It's well interesting. Do you know it composts to a nutrient-rich, but superbly friable loam in less than…" He tailed off into mumbles at Harry's Snape-like glare. "Well, you said yourself, Harry, we can't be sat around here all day like cheese at four-pence…"

Harry was positive he had never said anything of the sort.

"Oh, that's another phrase of Uncle Algie's."

_One of the more repeatable ones. _

Hermione was dying to hear more about this uncle - Neville was always so secretive about his family she hardly knew anything about them. Or perhaps it was because she'd never asked. Well, she was going to ask him now. It would take their minds off Remus to hear about somebody new. She was counting down to the launch of a couple of well-aimed but tactfully phrased questions, when Harry, preoccupied with his own problems and seeing no cause for undue sensitivity as far as Neville was concerned, lobbed in a grenade.

"Your Gran doesn't speak with a Northern accent, does she? I mean, I've only met her the once, but I didn't notice anything funny."

Neville recoiled then reconsidered. It seemed to be a day for disclosures – he might as well toss in his ha'porth. He was upset about Professor Lupin, of course, though nothing had been proven yet, but his own family skeletons were rattling around in his head like a cupboardful of Boggarts. It might just do him good to let them out for Harry and Hermione to laugh at. He could have made up any old story and his friends wouldn't have known different. But for reasons which he couldn't explain properly even to himself, he decided to tell them the truth.

"Funny? Have you noticed the really _funny_ thing about accents? It's alright if you're Scottish - you'd never say Professor McGonagall sounds stupid, would you? No, she's _refined_. And if you talk Yorkshire you're a salt of the earth type, and Geordie's are 'hard', and Scousers are 'quick-witted'… But if you've got an ordinary northern accent - or Brummie(1), for that matter - people assume you're thick… And yet there's Crabbe and Goyle, who haven't got half a brain between them, and just because they _sound_ educated…"

As those two dullards rarely said anything more than a grunt it was not easy to tell, thought Hermione. Harry, thinking of Dudders, agreed more readily.

"So, when you get to Hogwarts, you catch on pretty quick that the best thing to do with an accent is to lose it… I've had to, and I reckon it wasn't so different in gran's day." That had answered Harry's question, but Neville seemed to think he had to elaborate. He started obliquely: "You know Ginny? She's a sharp lass, isn't she? Even though she's young."

"Ginny Weasley? Sharp? You mean clever?" Harry had been doing fairly well keeping up with Neville's esoteric logic so far, but he couldn't see where this was leading. Neville nodded.

"Aye. It can go that way in families - no disrespect to Ron, mind. And there are seven of them - just goes to show. 'Appen she's on a scholarship?" he mused out loud.

"I've never heard of Hogwarts offering scholarships or bursaries or grants or anything," Hermione replied. "Neville, what are you getting at?"

"My Gran's younger than Great Uncle Algie. But she was always the clever one in their family - into herbal lore and Charms right from when she was little and later on, well, you wouldn't think so to look at her now, but she used to be really good at Arithmancy too. Actually understood what it was on about… I can't make head nor tail of it myself."

"Really?" Hermione made a mental note. "I must ask her about it sometime."

"And Uncle Algie wasn't so fussed about book learning. Not that he's stupid - he was more of a hands-on, outdoors type, not interested in the theoretical stuff."

They were trying to follow his drift. They'd just about cottoned on to the parallel with Ron and Ginny, when Neville referred to the Weasleys again.

"Just cos a wizard family is Pureblood, it doesn't mean it's rich - I mean, look at the Weasleys. And the Longbottoms - well, maybe we had money once, I don't know, but it must have been a long time ago. At the time my Gran and Uncle Algie were growing up they were nigh skint. That would have been round the turn of the century - times were hard up North. So, when my Uncle Algie got his letter - the letter from Hogwarts - their parents had to make a choice… They couldn't afford - "

The sentence stumbled on his lips. Neville sniffed wetly, swallowed and visibly braced himself for ridicule, pushing himself back into the chair as though it would cushion the impact of their scorn. "They couldn't afford to send both of them away to school," he stated bluntly. "My Great Uncle Algie never went to Hogwarts. So he speaks like he always did - and proud of it! There! Now you know. It's nothing to be ashamed of." His stare was defensive.

"No, no of course it isn't." Hermione had blushed scarlet. They'd only meant to be interested, but had ended up seeming inquisitive and nosey.

Harry and Hermione really didn't mind at all whether Uncle Algie was educated or not, but to Neville it clearly mattered a great deal. They could imagine how merciless Malfoy and the Slytherins would be if they got hold of this snippet of Longbottom shame. Hadn't Professor Dumbledore once said something to the effect that all wizards received their Hogwarts' letter when they were eleven, but not all chose to attend? They hadn't really listened at the time. They hadn't given it a second thought. Harry remembered his moment of panic when he had first seen the school's list of requirements: robes, books, brewing equipment, potions ingredients, and an optional animal… That had been before he realised that the Potters had left him a stash of Galleons in Gringotts. Ron's hand-me-down robes had always been something of a standing joke… but it had been friendly teasing; no one was malicious… well, the Slytherins maybe…

"But can he still…? He _is_ a wizard, right? So, even if he didn't… Look, Neville, don't take this the wrong way, OK? Can he still do magic? If he's not properly trained?" All Harry could think about was the awful scrapes he had got into by using accidental magic before he had learned to control his powers. He couldn't imagine how he'd have coped without the self-discipline that had been instilled into him at Hogwarts. He was sure he'd never have realised the sophistication and finesse of his magical talent.

"Trained? There's more ways of learning magic than from books," said Neville.

Hermione's lips tightened with scepticism.

"You learn from life." Judging from Neville's pummelled ego, life had been a tough teacher this holiday. "You learn the spells you need to use everyday. I don't know what Muggle-borns do, but with wizards it's like you're apprenticed to your family. They show you the stuff you'll actually need to know. Forget all that playing at lifting feathers with _Wingardium leviosa_ - Uncle Algie learned levitation by raising bales to build haystacks. Or by using _Evanesco_ to get rid of the dead runt of a litter of Nogtails, or _Scourgify_ to clean the slaver and slurry off his keks(2) - "

"Was he a farmer, then?"

"Sort of. Something to do with Experimental Breeding. That's where he met his mate Wigan. Then he worked for a time at the Mill - you can't live in Lancashire and not have some connection with the mills… And - " Here Neville managed a lop-sided grin; he was relaxing a little now. "…no cracks about '_Trouble at t' Mill…_'! It's actually quite a skilled job, you know Harry, weaving fabrics that incorporate - oh, I don't know - say, Acromantula silk, or spinning Demiguise hair for Invisibility Cloaks. Someone has to do it."

"I suppose so." Harry had been taking advantage of the properties of his Invisibility Cloak for six years and it had never occurred to him to wonder where, how and by whom it had been made.

"Then," Neville had started so he might as well finish now. "Then, when he got old he had a Ministry job - nothing posh - it was with the Department for the Control of Magical Creatures. I think he had to patrol the moors and dales, checking the Muggle-repelling charms - the ones that stop trespassers disturbing the centaurs and so on. Sounded a nice job - flying round in the fresh air all day… Convenient too."

"Convenient?"

"For his house. He's got this place on the other side of Bowland Forest, towards Bartlebrook."

Those were mere names to Harry and Hermione, but they nodded anyway.

"The other side?" Their part in the conversation had been reduced to a series of prompts.

"My Gran lives over Pendle(3) way. Uncle Algie's house is further west, on the way to Blackpool."

A close-grained knot of memory seemed to halt Neville in the midst of his recollections. He scratched his head thoughtfully; rubbed his itchy nose on the back of his hand; sniffed some more.

"So, did your Uncle make you do Potions too?" Hermione couldn't guess which Potions might be appropriate to everyday life in rural Lancashire. Weatherproofing Wax? Cotton dyes with built-in Self-drying Charms? Traditional country cures for 'Bobbin Burn' or 'Weavers' Wilt'?

"Potions? No - thank goodness, no. He took me to Blackpool. He likes the seaside. It's a kind of thing with him - he's been doing it ever since I was little."

_…making me scour the length of the Golden Mile and beyond, searching the shingle for Tern eggs or Plover nests to plunder for their shells; collecting the tufty grass-heads of sea lyme, marram or plantain; catching cinnabar moths in the dunes and pulling off their frail wings, putting the ragged, torn petals into a little jar to be stewed down later into Potion Redder; trudging through the salt-marshes, eyes downcast, scanning the shores for sea spurrey, purslane, cord grass and glasswort, splitting the tiny stems into tight, scratchy bundles – some for drying, some for immediate brewing; picking the helpless, flailing pink starfish from the rock pools and later grinding them into a gritty, peach-grey paste…_

_…strapping me into the seat on the Big Dipper… **"Yer mun do it. Stop tha skrikin'. Enjoy tha'sen, lad!" "But Uncle, ah'm afeart!" "Th'art nesh; th'art nobbut a big jessy…"(**_**_4)_**

_…smuggling my learner broomstick to the top of the Tower and lifting me up over the railings of the viewing platform… launching me into the air… "**…nobbut a big jessy…"**_

_…dangling me over the pier edge… dropping me… "**eh, lad, us'll shock the squib outta thee yet!"**_

"It's his idea of a family day out," sighed Neville, digging a giant hole in the beach, burying his memories, patting them down flat and upending a plastic bucket 'sand-pie' on the top. All he needed now was a paper flag.

"Gosh, you poor thing. It must be perishing at this time of year. Isn't it frightfully tacky?"

Hermione's ideal holiday consisted of finding a warm, secluded spot on a picturesque, sandy cove in Devon or Brittany… somewhere she could laze for hours undisturbed with several good books, interspersed with wholesome, nutritionally sound meals in quaint tea-shops, visits to the local galleries, museums and anywhere with a National Trust or SSSI(5) rating, or a 'highly recommended' star in her '_Holiday-makers Guide to Magical Monuments'_…

To Hermione, Blackpool conjured an image of faded glamour, tawdry tat, seedy amusement arcades, whey-faced workers bent on grim pleasure supping jellied eels from paper cups, and a featureless, plain, windswept slice of exposed sand tugging at the fraying shores of a drab and filthy ocean. It was a Dickensian stereotype, she knew, and she was ashamed to admit it, but the picture was lodged in her mind as firmly as the fallacy that the Danube is blue.

Neville didn't protest as vociferously as she'd expected. He was working himself up to a defence of the many bracing charms of the Lancashire Lido, when Harry asked,

"Blackpool? Isn't that where they have those Illumination things? I've heard of them. At Christmas when all the houses in Privet Drive rigged up their decorations - you know, the neon-effect 'Santa Stop Here' signs, and reindeer sleighs in lights on the garage roof… and twinkly fairy grottoes round the wishing wells… that sort of thing. Uncle Vernon always used to say, "Dudley, it's a sight for sore eyes. We'll give the _Illuminations_ a run for their money any day." Never had a bloody clue what he was on about. What's the big deal?"

For all her 'correctness', Hermione couldn't resist.

"It's like an open prison, but with ark-lights so that you can see the day-trippers trying to escape! Oh, Neville, I'm only teasing. I've never seen them myself; I'm sure they're very impressive."

"It's funny you should say that…" Neville seemed about to say something, but then, reticently, thought better of it. "No, you wouldn't be interested."

"Yes we would. Go on Neville." Hermione encouraged him.

"Yeah, we've got nothing else to do…" Harry was less diplomatic.

Partially appeased, Neville was arranging his answer. There were very few complimentary anecdotes about Great Uncle Algie, so he was anxious to make the most of this one - he didn't want his friends to think he came from a family of Northern non-entities. In a strange way he felt he owed it to the 'owd codger' to get it right.

"It's a Muggle thing, Harry. They're lights, that's all. You know, _electrical_ ones? With _bulbs_? And they're an Autumn attraction - they finish in September, so they weren't on last week, but the Christmas displays were almost as good. But they're more than just lights. They go on and on… hundreds of thousands of bulbs. They go for nearly six miles, all along from Squire's Gate to Red Bank Road. When I was a kid, Harry, you know before my proper magic had, like, 'kicked-in', it seemed like magic to me… I used to be allowed to stay up late, after dark, and we'd all walk along the Promenade - me, my Gran, Uncle Agie, Aunt Enid, and Great Cousin Ethel, and sometimes Uncle's friends would come too - right up the 'Mile' and further… and the lights would be flashing and twinkling - all colours, mind - and, well, it was incredible…" Neville's eyes shone with nostalgia.

"The Illuminations began over a hundred years ago. To begin with they only had a few lights, but the Muggles were awfully taken with it - the whole electricity thing - and they called it 'artificial sunshine'. And each year they seemed to add more and more lights, especially when there was some special event like a royal visit or something.

"Then, some bright spark - " Neville paused and looked up shyly to see if they had noticed the pun - he felt quite the raconteur! "…hit on the idea of making pictures out of the bulbs - that was back in the 1930s. My Great Uncle Algie would have been a young wizard in those days. Anyway, he says that he and his friend were there on 'Lighting Up Night' - there's always a big celebration ceremony, and they get a Muggle celebrity to throw the 'On' switch - and that friend of his friend, Wigan Parbold his name is, dared him…"

"Dared him to do what?" Harry and Hermione were both caught up in this tale now.

"Dared him to make the bulb pictures _move_. Turn them into, like, _animated tableaux_…"

"Like wizard photos?" asked Hermione, breathlessly, rather stunned that Blackpool's world-famous, animated Illuminations might owe their existence to a mere wizard dare… "Neville, you're not serious?"

"It's true! The Muggles thought the Corporation had excelled themselves! Of course, there was all hell to pay afterwards - the Ministry got wind of it - they had to Obliviate some of the, er, bulb-workers…"

"Electricians," corrected Hermione.

"But then there was the war so there was a blackout for several years. By the time the Illuminations were allowed again, the Muggles had learned about getting the bulbs to flash in sequence. Of course, it'll never be as good as that first time…"

"And that's your Uncle Algie's claim to fame? That's cool! He must be a great old bloke. I'd like to meet him," said Harry.

_No, you wouldn't, thought Neville, not really._

**End of Chapter.**

1 Geordie – from Newcastle; Scousers – from Liverpool; Brummie – from Birmingham

2 keks - trousers

3 Pendle – several covens still flourish near this Lancashire town

4 mun – must; skrikin – shrieking; nesh – soft, 'wet'; nobbut a big jessy – just a cissy

5 SSSI – Site of Special Scientific Interest

**A/N: I know some of the chapters end rather abruptly, but, as I said before, I originally had about four massively long chapters and I decided to cut back and forth... but we are children of the media age - we can handle it!**

**Next Chapter: QUIG'S CURE. Cut to Snape. Will the elf's attempt to cheer up his master make Snape feel better or worse?**


	14. QUIG'S CURE

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME**

**By Bellegeste**

**Chapter 14:QUIG'S CURE**

The Potting Shed was hot and humid. It reminded him of Professor Sprout's greenhouse. And that, in turn, reminded him of Neville Longbottom. Snape swore under his breath, realising that the blasted boy would have arrived at Hogwarts expecting to see him. He had sent for Neville following a less than amicable conversation with his grandmother - she of the sugary Chorley Cakes and Parkin Pigs, but in real life a much tougher cookie. And now he was regretting it. He was not in the mood today for Longbottom's brand of hapless incompetence.

Given that it was late December - hardly a prime growing season - the shed was unseasonally fruitful. Sprouting from a half-barrel in one corner, a stout-stemmed, broad-leaved vine-like plant had been trained upwards into and along the roof beams, its leafy tendrils twining towards the light, each twisting branch grafted from a different stock: dangling amidst the lush foliage like ripening multi-coloured baubles, Snape could see a mixed crop of gourds, squash, capsicum, tomatoes, grapes, mangosteen, sapodilla and spiny rambutan. From the rafters swung hippy necklaces of drying fungi: coffee-coloured, warty Panthercaps, bulbous Satan's Bolete, Scarlet Sickeners… On the far side, behind a leaning bundle of bamboo canes, the drooping, black-satin bells of Ink-head Hoya dripped their treacly nectar into a wide-brimmed collecting cup. The cup drained into a pipe, attached to a flask which led into a tube… The whole set up looked suspiciously like a still, and Snape averted his eyes.

The potting table was given over entirely to rows of shallow, loam-filled pots each containing about a dozen cuttings, some still in leaf, others mere sticks. Again Snape experienced - and impatiently dismissed - a glimmer of déjà vu : Longbottom once more, pink with perseverance, labouring over a small forest of infected wands. _Was that child fated to dog his thoughts today?_ Snape ran his gaze over the table. He believed he recognised a few of his rarer potion-plants, though it was impossible to identify them all from the short spikes. Quig had evidently lost no time in re-rooting cuttings salvaged from the fire, preparing to replant and restock the trampled, scorched, ash-contaminated herb garden, his pride and joy.

The light in the shed, straining to penetrate the clusters of waving fronds as they leaned towards the windows, was greenish and diffused with a strange, rippling mobility which gave Snape - already swimming in the humidity - the impression that he was underwater. The surface of the pots, he noticed, glittered as though the earth itself were formed from crushed sequins. Snape picked up a pot and with his wand prodded at a shiny, reflective disc in the soil. So Quig was experimenting with his new _Skin 'n' Scale_ fertiliser. That would account for the overpowering smell of rancid fish. Snape had been afraid that the elf was cooking up another delicacy, and that he might be required to eat it.

Sweating in the tropical atmosphere, Snape shed his coat and scarf rather hurriedly, flinging them loosely behind him and leaving them to hang themselves up on a convenient nail on the back of the door. Then, cooler and less encumbered, he manoeuvred his way around the empty wheel-barrow which blocked the left-hand gangway, and made for the source of the heat. A rusty, metal brazier about the size of a large dustbin with a lid like an inverted funnel was glowing ominously, virtually red-hot, belting out enough heat to bake the entire Potions dungeon, let alone this cramped and – Snape double-checked the exits – _wooden_ shed. Spurts of pink smoke puffed out of the funnel at rhythmic intervals, and the compact furnace crackled and spat like a baby dragon learning to whistle.

At the base of the brazier, so close that stray sparks were bouncing off his belly, (clearly not sufficiently traumatised by his recent ordeal to scare him from the hot-seat), lay Braque. Snape crossed to the lizard's side and crouched down, wordlessly examining the stump of the severed tail, running expert fingers across the scaly hide, checking for irritation, burns and sores. The Giant Tuatara fixed him with an amber, reptilian stare and greeted his master with a volley of dry clicks. A long, purple tongue flickered out and licked him on the wrist.

The sight of the truncated, weirdly frog-like torso sent a surge of rage coursing through the man. His jaw clenched as he fought back a tide of anger and his muscles locked, gripped in a seizure of grief and fury. For several minutes he squatted there, unmoving, his hand resting lightly on the back of the wounded lizard.

A slight pressure on his shoulder brought Snape leaping edgily to his feet, and he whipped round in one fluid movement, wand raised to attack. He found himself looking down upon the potato-bald, shrivelled head of Quig. The elf's leguminous features were distorted into a mud-caked crinkle of delight and concern. Immediately the gnarled hands began to gesture.

'_Master Snape is imprudent in permitting Quigley to approach unobserved'_ he signed.

"I know," Snape admitted wearily. Careless

'_There is evidence of tail tissue regeneration.'_

"Yes. I can detect no infection. You've done well."

'_Quigley sent Master Snape a message, with the female whose hair resembles a Rainbow Lorikeet.'_

"Auror Tonks?" Yes, Longbottom had mentioned her name. That boy again!

The elf's hands worked rapidly, weaving questions and comments:

'_The white-beard wizard informed Quigley of master's whereabouts. Quigley has been awaiting instructions.'_

"I was detained." No need to go into details. Dumbledore would have told him everything he needed to know.

'_Master Snape has inspected the Cottage? He has visited the Manor?'_

"I have."

The fluttering fingers left a great deal unsaid. Snape was grateful to the ancient elf for his stalwart composure and common-sense. Rather than dwelling on the past, he was forward-looking and practical. Not once had he reproached Snape for the attack or strayed into sentimental histrionics. Not all elves were like that long-nosed, bat-eared, hysterical creature who fawned and fussed over Harry.

'_Quigley has been entering the basement via the ventilation duct…'_ the hands informed him. Uncomplaining and resourceful, Quig had found a way to see to the needs of the laboratory animals. Snape took a guilty step towards the door - he hadn't yet checked on his menagerie.

'_And the perimeter breach has been only temporarily re-warded…'_

"**Alright!** I shall un-spell the door," Snape said heavily, "and recalculate the wards for the Estate."

Ideally he would have liked to intensify the wards even further, but that would require the co-operation of at least two other wizards, preferably ones well-versed in the Dark Arts. Snape knew he could always count on Dumbledore, but who else could he ask? Lupin? The irony of approaching the werewolf for assistance did not escape him. But he'd been brewing his Wolfsbane for long enough - the creature owed him a favour, at the very least. He'd have to send him an owl.

The list of magical chores was getting ever longer and Snape didn't feel equal to them. He was beginning to wish he had taken Pomfrey's advice and rested for another day. He wiped a hand across his brow.

"Quig, it's appallingly hot in here," he snapped. "Those plants aren't equatorial, you know. What do you think you're playing at?"

The long-suffering, old retainer regarded the young, over-wrought wizard with tolerant forbearance. He had known Snape all his life and he could tell when his master was reaching his limit.

'_Quigley is maintaining an elevated ambient temperature in the shed to raise the metabolic rate of the Tuatara and enhance the healing process'_ he signed calmly, (though he personally attributed Braque's recovery to the barrow-loads of anti-bacterial Manuka mushrooms he had been force-feeding him). Years of working for Snape, however, had taught him to marry scientific and magical remedies. He moved a watering-can and a hand-trowel off a garden stool, making space for Snape to sit down. Then he waddled off - this time Snape noticed the flat-smack footsteps – and began fossicking for something under the bench.

Snape watched him listlessly.

"Where does it all end? It doesn't get any easier," he muttered, addressing the floor, knowing the elf would be unable to hear him.

The elf stopped what he was doing and rapped on the table to attract Snape's attention. The pale, stressed face of the wizard as he looked up reminded the elf acutely of his dead mistress - her son had inherited the same chiselled cheek-bones, the same jet-black eyes, but without the laughter-lines. _Things were bad enough when I was young, _Snape was thinking_, but at least_ w_hen I was young I still had hope_...

_'Master Harry is at Hogwarts?'_ With intuitive understanding the elf eased Snape back into the present and towards a new hope…

Then he extracted a square-sided, glass cod-bottle from a crate hidden beneath a length of tarpaulin. Pressing in the marble stopper, he passed it across to his master with a wink. The liquid was nettle-hot and peppery, with a smoky under-taste and a tart hint of salmonberry, pitanga and other less conventional ingredients. Preferring not to be told the recipe for Quig's 'special brew', Snape accepted it without comment and took a tentative sip. Spiced warmth spilled into his body and the future began to look less bleak.

Harry? Perhaps he should have brought Harry with him today. Would all this have been any more bearable with Harry at his side? The fact that he was even asking himself the question made him shake his head in wonder. What was this stuff of Quigs? Mushroom Mead? He took another appreciative sip.

…he was Jonah in the belly of the whale… it was hot in here, damp…moisture dripping… a salty, fishy smell, not unpleasant… he was diving, diving to the depths of the ocean, deeper and deeper… it was warm in here, and safe…no work, no worries…no family…no obligations…

Snape's eyes shot open. Grinning hideously, Quig gave him a thumbs up and tapped him on the knee.

_'Master is wanting to send an owl?'_ There was a slightly singed tawny owl perched nervously on his shoulder.

How the hell did he know that, mused Snape, rubbing his forehead, dragging his responsibilities back into focus. Taking the quill he sighed and scratched a curt note to Neville Longbottom.

**End of Chapter.**

**Next Chapter: DEBTOR'S PRISON. Is that a kind of financial Azkaban? Or am I being pretentiously metaphorical? Anyway, it's another angsty Neville, Harry, Hermione chapter…**


	15. DEBTOR'S PRISON

**LOST PERSPECTIVE **

PAYBACK TIME

By Bellegeste

A/N: We cut from the Potting Shed back to Neville, Harry and Hermione. This episode is based on an early canon reference to Gt. Uncle Algie. I just felt it was important to try to flesh out Neville's background to give some insight as to why he is like he is.

**Chapter15 : DEBTOR'S PRISON**

Neville shivered, buffeted by a salty wave of memory that slapped into his ears, his eyes, up his nose and left him choking on the dead taste of brine. The water had been cold then, that summer in his childhood, cold and deep and dark as it sucked him in and down and under; it had been even colder yesterday, in December…

…they'd both had a moderately successful morning walking in Stanley Park - Neville had sneaked a couple of cuttings from dormant shrubs in the Italian Garden, and then he had stood on the look out for the Park-keeper while Uncle Algie had extracted some pinion feathers from one of the Chinese Geese on the lake. After lunch ('taterash(1)' and strong tea) in a 'greasy spoon' on the front, Algie had proposed a stroll along the Pier. Halfway down the Promenade they bumped into Wigan Parbold(2) taking his four Jarvotts – Dandie, Ball, Fancie and Tibb(3) - for a walk along the beach. Seal brown, lithe, sinuous and smooth-coated, these creatures were a cross between the common Irish Jarvey and a sea otter, which gave them the questionable ability to curse underwater and to lie floating on their backs in the sea cracking rude jokes. Wigan had earned quite a reputation in South Lancs as a champion Jarvott breeder - (rumour had it that after his last run-in with the Committee for the Control of Experimental Breeds he'd even applied for a licence) - his pups were much in demand amongst the fishing fraternity: they could be trained up to check the lobster and Malaclaw pots, and were equally useful on land for gnome clearance.

"Eighup, Wigan!"

"Eighup, our Algie!"

In a silence born of nearly a century of companionship, the two old wizards stumped along, side by side, leaning into the wind. Neville struggled on behind them, pulling his hood more closely around his freezing ears. The Jarvotts wove and meandered in and about his legs, never quite tripping him up but constantly underfoot. Muggles kept mistaking them for Dachshunds. With tails like that? Wigan must have been using a _Disillusionment Charm_.

They reached the end of the Pier and stood gazing out over the open-cast quarry of the sea. The waves were choppy, rough-hewn, slate-grey. The four Jarvotts blithely dived off the edge and moments later their dark heads could be seen bobbing amidst the white-flecked rollers or gambolling in the surf, catching the light and gleaming silver like Hermione's Patronus. To Neville's acute embarrassment, Uncle Algie had begun to tell Wigan the story of his first, early, unintentional plunge from that very spot. Shame-faced he concentrated his attention on the cavorting, brown curves of the Jarvotts, but he couldn't escape his uncle's scathing commentary.

"…reet t' bottom, like an owd iron clog! Ah had ter levitate t' lad up an' out messen… Aye, ah sed : 'Laddie, tha mun sink or swim - show us the magic as th'art made on… Same as goes fer them pups, eh Wigan? Too much Jarvey, and them's jiggered! Us'll nay be having squi - "

"**I'm not a squib!**" Neville had shouted, raising his voice to be heard above the bitter wind. "I never have been. And you didn't have to throw me in the sea to prove it! For Merlin's sake, Uncle, witch-dunking went out in the middle ages!"

But neither of them had forgotten the fact that he had nearly drowned. A canny gleam highlighted the old wizard's sunken eyes and his weathered, red-veined cheeks creased into a grin.

"Aye, an is that so? 'Arken t' lad, Wigan! Is that what them's learning yer at that fancy skewel? Th'art purrin' lad(4)… Let's be seeing some o' this gradely(5) Hogwarts' magic - or is tha yed as full of blether as tha belly?"

And without any warning he had whipped out his wand, cast a lightning '_Toes-up!_' (which Neville only later recognised as a simple form of _Inverto!)_, flipped his Great nephew upside-down and pushed him over the wrought iron balustrade. For the second time in his life Neville felt himself falling from Blackpool Pier into the icy waters of the Irish Sea…

"Neville?" It was Hermione's voice, soft and very far away, calling him back. "Neville, what is it?"

Neville still had the taste of salt in his mouth; hot humiliation was stinging at the back of his nose, making him sniff more than ever.

"Neville? What's wrong?" Hermione's hand was on his arm, warm and concerned.

"I fell in," he mumbled.

"In where? Into the sea?" exclaimed Harry, laughing. "Grief, Neville you're a loser! How on earth did you manage that?"

"Oh do _shut up_, Harry! Can't you see he's upset?"

"Off the end of the Pier… it was a long way down. I got all wet…"

"Mmm - water can do that!" Harry's instinct was to joke his friend out of it, but Hermione was shooting daggers in his direction… "But surely you did a _Flotation Charm_, or _Accio Life-belt!_ or something?"

Neville's lips drooped.

"I just heard this voice in my head yelling at me - it was Fudge ranting on about 'the penalties for the improper use of magic by underage wizards'. My brain's that stuffed with rules and regulations… It put me off. By the time I got to doing an emergency levitation spell I were full fathom five… And then the Jarvotts grabbed me by my sleeves and towed me ashore. Called me ' a blithering pink bag of blubbery shark-bait' they did."

While Harry side-tracked Neville onto the subject of talking otters, Hermione revived the tea. By the time she pressed another hot, steaming mug into Neville's hands he was looking less shaky.

"Didn't your Uncle try to save you?" she asked.

"Save me?" Neville choked. "He thought it was the funniest thing since fish fingers! He and Wigan were laughing so much they almost fell in too. Wigan said if I ever wanted to give up being a wizard I could have a job as a stick - he'd chuck me in and his Jarvotts'd fetch me…"

"That's not very nice," commented Hermione tartly, taking an instant dislike to Wigan Parbold.

"No, but… 'appen they're right. I'm not cut out to be a wizard. It's what they all think – my Gran and Uncle Algie, and Wigan - and Snape…"

He sounded forlorn and despondent, as though his self-esteem, wobbly at the best of times had been run over by the carrier's cart – not only knocked for six but crushed by the carriage wheel, trampled by the horses' hooves and left for dead on the dirt-track.

"Don't listen to them, Neville - focus on your strengths not your weaknesses," Hermione encouraged, trying to be constructive, though aware that she sounded more like a careers' advisor than a caring friend. She reminded Harry of the fake Mad-Eye, advising him before the first challenge in the Tri-Wizard tournament. 'Play to your strengths' he'd growled. Sound advice, even from an impostor.

"What about Herbology? You're streets ahead of us all there."

"I'll say," agreed Harry. "Professor Sprout thinks you're a prodigy. And what about the DA? You were easily one of the best - I'm sure Remus would agree. Pity he's not here - he'd get you to see sense." Harry spoke the name defiantly, still refusing to acknowledge Hermione's suspicions. "Anyway, it doesn't matter what people think…"

Neville's gaze had been fixed on his mug, his thumb tracing slow half-circles around the slim, porcelain rim, studying the entwined Celtic knot pattern as intently as if he were about to set up a cottage industry reproducing it. Now he lifted his eyes and let them settle heavily on Harry.

For as long as they could remember, Neville - nerdy, nit-wit Neville - had been the long-suffering butt of everybody's jokes. And, by and large, he had accepted the role of classroom duffer, realising that he was destined forever to play the Fool and never the romantic lead or tragic hero. In the face of mockery, he fell back on a rueful resilience, a kind of buoyant innocence that kept him afloat. But now even that seemed waterlogged. His dampened spirits were weighing on him, but, it seemed to Hermione as she watched him, that there was something extra dragging him down. It was as though a part of his youth had drowned in that dunking, and the Neville that had come shivering to the shore, bruised and bedraggled, was wrapped in clammy disillusion, burdened with a new and sobering maturity.

"That's right rich, coming from you, Harry," he said at last. "You of all people should know - it _shouldn't_ matter, but it _does_. Destiny's like a prison - you can't escape. _You_ could forget all about the Prophecy, if you wanted… disappear off into a normal, humdrum life - go to Somerset and work as a volunteer inthe Snidget Reservationor something. But you wouldn't do that, would you? Why not? Because you've got this idea that people _think_ you're their saviour. You've got this responsibility; you can't just abandon it. It's a bit like that with me. Oh, I may not be '_The Boy Who Lived_' - nobody's looking to Neville Longbottom to save the wizarding world - good thing too - but there are still… …expectations. And I keep letting everybody down. I'm a dead loss."

Harry and Hermione exchanged baffled glances. This was more than the understandable post-holiday depression, compounded by the prospect of special tuition with Snape.

"You just have to do your best, Neville. No one can expect more than that." Another trite platitude - Hermione wished she had not said anything at all. She didn't know what she was dealing with here, and without details she couldn't work out a solution. Harry adopted a less circumspect approach.

"Come on, mate - spit it out. This isn't about being pushed off a Pier. What've they been saying?"

In his experience - with one notable exception - words could leave a more lasting scar than mere blows. Neville didn't quite hold his nose, but he seemed to be taking a deep breath, preparing for another plunge…

"It's like they've all got their hopes pinned on me. Like I'm their last hope. Like I've got to represent the whole family - and it's so much worse because of my parents - all their potential just cursed into nothingness - they were both really bright, you know… Aurors and everything. Clever and talented - not a bit like me - that makes it harder too…"

He was swimming against a current of failure, straining to keep his head above water; short, snatchy strokes, gulping explanations…

"My Gran never says anything right out, but I know what she's thinking: that I owe it to them to be a success, so that their… 'sacrifice' wasn't a complete, darned waste… Surely you can see that, can't you, Harry?"

Harry could, too clearly now. He stared at his friend in mute sympathy, relating to him on a fundamental level, stunned to hear his own demons struggling from Neville's trembling lips.

"And it's even worse with Uncle Algie - he sees me as this squibby runt - probably thinks I should have been left out for the dragons at birth - and it really saddens him that I'm the only one left to carry on the bloodline. He said as much to Wigan. I heard him. He said: 'There be more magic in them Jarvotts than in that lad!'

He sees me getting all this attention, and being given opportunities that he never had… and then being so useless, squandering my chances… and it rankles… He's bound to be jealous. It's not like he hates me or anything, but I know I'm a big, big disappointment. He reckons I'm soft - a 'nesh jessy' he calls me - that's basically like saying I'm a wimp. And then he throws me in at the deep end - literally, yeah! – to see how I'll cope. I don't even think he means to be harsh - it's his way of trying to spur me on, to goad me into being more magic - like he thinks I'm not really trying and if he provokes me enough…"

Harry could relate to that too.

"What does he think I am - some Muggle conjuror who's got a magic egg hidden up his sleeve? Or does he expect me to produce it out of a hat, or from behind my ear?"

With a sharp, irritable gesture Neville plucked an invisible spell from near his hairline and snapped his hand open as though releasing an explosion of magic into the Common Room. Despite themselves, Harry and Hermione ducked.

"There's all this pressure… all these expectations," Neville grumbled. "I feel like I owe it to Uncle Algie to take advantage of all the opportunities he never got; and I owe it to my Gran to, kind of, repay her for looking after me all these years… And I even owe it to Snape because he let me back into Potions… And I owe it to my parents because… well, because I just do… It's like my whole life is one massive debt!"

Neville surfaced for air and stopped speaking. Harry and Hermione didn't know what to say. Seeing their quiet, unassuming friend peeling off his outer layers of ineptitude and stripping down to the bare truth had shocked them into a guilty but supportive silence. They could see what he meant. And however much they wanted to reassure him with something ego-boosting, they could both identify too strongly with the concept of parental 'pressure' to find it in themselves to disagree.

It was a relief to them all when an insistent tapping on the glass gave them an excuse to change the subject. Harry got up and pulled open the window. A rather seedy owl stepped over the sill and was airborne once more, gliding across the Common Room directly to Neville and landing neatly on his knee. A whiff of smoke and darkness wafted from his wings.

Neville read the note, his face falling like a suicide from a bridge.

"It's pay-back time. Snape wants to see me in his office this evening…"

**End of chapter.**

1 Taterash – traditional Lancashire dish made of corned beef and potatoes

2 Wigan Parbold - there's a roadsign off the M6 Motorway on the way to Preston which directs to 'Wigan, Parbold'. It always sounded like a name to me…!

3 Dandie, Ball, Fancie and Tibb - named after the familiars of the four witches who stood accused in the infamous Pendle Witch Trials of 1612.

4 Purrin – putting (your head in the dog's kennel) i.e. asking for trouble

5 gradely - fine

**Next Chapter: THE BUTTON. It's the last one folks. And it's a sad one. All will be reveealed.**


	16. THE BUTTON

**LOST PERSPECTIVE 7**

**PAYBACK TIME **

By Bellegeste

**A/N: This is it - the final chapter. I feel quite sad when I get to the end of a story... This chapter started out in my mind as a one shot, as I said before - so all the preceding chapters have really been background, fleshing out what goes on here.**

**Oh, and Neville _thinks_ a rude word in this chapter! Go Neville!**

**Reviews. Duj: I never rule out the possibility of a sequel, though I have no immediate plans to continue this one any further at present. I want to wait for the developments in HBP. This chapter brings the story to what I hope is a climax, though not necessarily a full resolution. But in life the loose ends are not always neatly tied. There will always be room to deliberate on how someone reacts to this or somebody else feels about that...I just felt that I had taken this particular thread as far as I wanted to, though it lays the foundation for possible later interaction between certain characters.**

**.psst! You all remember the button, right? Hey! Were you paying attention in those early chapters? LOL**

**Chapter 16:THE BUTTON**

"Oh, it's you." Snape barely glanced up.

"Yes, it's me." After some consultation with Harry and Hermione, Neville had decided to adopt an affirmative strategy: he was going to agree with everything Snape said, and try to survive the ordeal through sheer positivity.

"Well, don't just stand there… come in, and don't let the door - "

A through draught from goodness knows where - this underground torture-chamber of an office didn't have a window to create a draught - had plucked the door from Neville's grasp and sent it swinging back with a reverberating crash. Several sheets of parchment were blown off Snape's desk and sailed out onto the dungeon floor.

"…slam." Snape completed his sentence dryly.

"Sorry, Sir," Neville whimpered, scurrying to pick up the fallen papers. They were maps and charts of - Neville rotated a page to read the heading - of the Snape Estate. He hurried to pop them back on the desk, replacing them on top of what looked like an architectural blueprint of a cottage.

"Sorry, Sir," he repeated, contrite and already somewhat dismayed. This was not a good start.

"Hmm." Snape was engrossed in a complex calculation. The paper he was working on was a maze of characters, symbols and runic formulae. "I shall be with you in a minute, Longbottom," he said, preoccupied, not taking his eyes off the mathematical grid. "Stand over there and don't move. Don't _touch_ anything."

"Yes, Sir," Neville agreed, doing precisely as he was told. He stood and watched the Potions master as he referred to a thick volume of ciphers, logograms, hieroglyphs and cryptograms, flicking through a galaxy of astrological concordances, pin-pointing an equation here an encoding there and adding them to his extensive list. Neville had no idea what Snape was doing; it looked horribly complicated - numerology? Arithmancy? Or something darker? He didn't dare ask. He simply waited, getting colder as he stood obediently still (his nose was starting to drip again), but, unaccountably, sweating all the more.

Snape must have brought the chaos of figures to some conclusion, for he closed the book and straightened the papers. Finally he looked up to meet Neville's bemused gaze.

"I intend to strengthen the security wards around my estate," he explained, unnecessarily. He didn't have to justify himself to a student. And then, even more unexpectedly,

"You haven't seen Professor Lupin anywhere in the castle, have you?"

Remus? Neville gulped and spluttered a panicky negative. Why did Snape want Remus? What was he planning to do to him? Oh, he was a cold fish, was Snape.

"N-n-no, Sir." He sniffed.

"Pity."

Snape stood up and began to pace the room, very slowly, arms folded. It was as though he needed the height and motion to perfect his intimidatory mode. It certainly worked on Neville - every measured step was like a hammer blow from on high, driving the nails more deeply into his scholastic coffin. True, their height differential was less than it used to be - Snape didn't tower over Neville in quite the way he once had, but his physical presence seemed to have more to do with attitude than actual inches, and Neville shrank in his shadow. Snape's expression as he regarded the cowed boy was one of distaste and something less identifiable - but Neville wasn't aiming for subtlety: 'loathing' described it adequately enough for his purposes.

"So. Potions." Snape could make two innocuous words sound like a death sentence.

"Yes, Sir."

"Your grandmother informs me that you have undertaken some revision this holiday."

"Yes, Sir." _Good, keep going with those affirmatives, Nev._

"And yet you appear to be neither maimed nor disfigured. Well, well…" The master let his lips curl into a sneer.

"My Gran has sent you some stuff, Sir. In my bag. Can I …?" Neville was anxious to get this embarrassing present-giving over and done with. Yet, transfixed by apprehension, he was loath to make any sudden movement that might be misinterpreted. He didn't want Snape to draw his wand and hex him - he wouldn't put it past the man. He might be warming up for his revenge on Remus!

"Hurry up then." Impatient. What nauseating confection had the batty old crone sent this time - Lardy Bread? Pontefract cakes?(1) Did she think she could bribe him with _buns_? But the boy produced three squat Kilner-type jars and slid them onto the desk.

"Sharks' teeth, Hagfish mucus and…"

"Sea Cucumber entrails." Snape had picked up the third jar, turning it and examining the revolting, brown tubes as they oozed in one direction and then the other. "Expelled during a simulated attack? They will contain the authentic adrenal enzyme?"

"Oh yes, Sir." Neville thought it safest to agree. "I caught them myself yesterday. They're all fresh, Sir."

"Indeed." Snape cast Neville a look of acid appraisal. "Well, you can tell your grandmother that her gifts are…" He paused, lifting each jar and studying the contents intently as a prelude to placing it upon his shelf to join the ranks of hideous specimens, grotesquely bobbing and floating. "…her gifts are _understood_," he said. "And appreciated."

Neville wished Snape wouldn't stare at him like that. He felt he must have some massive, dangling bogey, or a trail of Trevor's toad 'squirt' on his shoulder. He sniffed again, self-consciously. It was an unfortunate reflex, acting on Snape – already tired and short-tempered – as a powerful irritant.

"Stop that infernal sniffing!" he snapped. "Or I shall cauterise your nostrils - permanently. If it weren't for the fact that a sense of smell is advantageous in Potion-making…"

Neville didn't fancy the idea of having his nose 'quarterised' - it sounded painful.

"Sorry, Sir," he mumbled. He thought he heard Snape mutter 'you will be' under his breath, but he couldn't be sure. The master was staring at him again, with a look more of sadness than hostility. It was odd, unsettling.

"Sir?"

It seemed to Neville that Snape jumped _internally_, though outwardly betraying no sign. He cleared his throat and resumed the pacing.

"So you wish to continue Potions? A doleful prospect for all concerned. I can't say that I am remotely thrilled by it. However, your tedious presence in my class will be tolerated, Longbottom, under certain conditions. Are you listening to me? There is to be no repeat of the farcical disruption with which you sabotaged my lessons last term. Do you understand, boy? **No** mislaid equipment, **no** forgotten books, **no** blunt scalpels, **no** cracked flasks, **no** contaminated ingredients, **no** toads loose in the store-cupboard,** no** turning over two pages by mistake because your book is inexplicably smeared with syrup, **no** food brought into the dungeons, **no** un-blanched Shark Lily and **no exploding cauldrons! **Got that? Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Sir." Neville thought it grossly unfair of Snape to blame him for Malfoy's doctoring of his ingredients, but he wasn't going to argue.

"You will pay attention at all times," Snape continued. "You will focus on the Potion – and nothing else. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Homework will be submitted on time. I should not need to remind you that it is to be _your own work_, not copied from the scripts of any well-meaning but misguided associates… I shall, as always, deduct marks for irrelevance and illegibility. Do not expect me to make any concessions in your case. You are – or am I making a rash assumption here – _capable_ of writing legibly?"

"Yes, Sir." Neville felt supremely ill-used here. His handwriting was far better than Ron's or even Harry's.

"Yes, Sir? Then why do I have to put up with unreadable bilge like this?"

Snape had removed a sheet from a grey folder and now thrust it under Neville's dripping nose. With horror he recognised a page from one of last term's antidote assignments – not one of his proudest achievements. Snape had evidently begun correcting it - the first two paragraphs were almost obliterated by his spiky comments – but had then given up and put a thick, red line through the whole thing. He tossed it back onto the desk with a snort.

"You are here to learn, Longbottom. And I - Merlin help me! – am here to teach. So, if you have a question, you will address it to **me** and not to the redoubtable Miss Granger."

"Yes, Sir."

"Furthermore - and I have obtained your grandmother's authorisation for this - you will present yourself in the dungeons five minutes before the commencement of each potions lesson. I shall administer one drop of _Wit Sharpening Potion_. This dosage is not sufficient to give you any unfair advantage over your fellow students. It will not imbue you with the mental acuity of a Hipworth or a Tugwood(2). It will however improve your concentration enough for you to survive for the duration of a class without any dangerous lapses of memory or judgement. I trust that is acceptable to you?"

Disagreement was not an option.

"Yes, Sir." Sensing that the interview was coming to an end, Neville risked another productively juicy sniff. "Is that all, Sir?"

"No. …head back, Longbottom."

"Sir?" _Where? What?_

"I said, 'Tip your head back'. Are you deaf?" Snape enunciated the words cuttingly. Neville stuck his chin out a fraction. The idea of exposing his pale, pinkish throat and softly pulsating jugular to an unchained, prowling Snape struck him as sheer, suicidal folly. The man advanced on him and, index finger extended, pushed Neville's wobbling chin up, hinging his head back until Neville found himself staring at the ceiling. He squinted sideways trying to keep Snape in his peripheral vision, but only succeeded in making himself dizzy so that he lost his balance and staggered. A cold hand clamped tight on the collar at the back of his neck and stopped him falling. At the same time he felt a stinging, scouring sensation in his nostrils. _Snape had put something in his nose. Liquid fire! Molten ice! He'd poisoned him! He could feel his brains melting already… It was freezing the inside of his skull. His head was on fire. It was hot. It was cold. It was searing…it was… worse than that time Seamus had tricked him into rubbing 'Deep Heat' on his dick… it was burning… er, actually, it didn't feel so bad after all… _Neville inhaled a long, cool, clear breath and stood up to see Snape replacing the stopper on a small, dark bottle.

"W-what was that stuff?" he stuttered. Unsmiling, the master crossed the room to wash his hands at the sink.

"If you thought you were going to plead Potion Rhinitis as an excuse for another term's underachievement, you'd better think again."

"No, Sir. I wasn't. I hadn't even thought..." Neville didn't know whether to thank him or resent his aspersions. But there was no denying the fact that the sniff had gone. "Thank you, Sir. Can I go now, Sir?"

"Yes… No…" Snape was strangely undecided. "Yes. You can go. And don't slam the door!"

Neville was reaching for the handle, already celebrating a lucky escape, when the potions master called him back.

"Longbottom!"

"Sir?" _So near yet so far! How cruel could the man get?_

Snape addressed the boy with cold, forced civility.

"One more thing. I feel I should inform you, Longbottom, that I do not hold you personally accountable. My feelings on the matter will not influence my assessment of your performance in class."

Another 'Yes, Sir' was already half way out of his mouth, when Neville realised he hadn't the faintest idea what Professor Snape was talking about. He couldn't still be harping on about Draco and that ridiculous Shark Lily? _Feelings_? What feelings? A number of questions fuzzed in his brain, but he only managed to articulate an incoherent "What have I done?" as he raised an uncomprehending face to the Potions master.

Alarm registered in Snape's jet-black eyes as they met the boy's blank stare. _She hasn't told him! Oh, this is laughable! This is absurd. The child doesn't even know. Am **I** supposed to tell him? _When Snape had promised Dumbledore that he would speak to the boy, this wasn't at all what he had had in mind.

"Sit down, Longbottom."

Neville sat about as comfortably as if he had a noose around his neck and was waiting for Snape to kick the chair out from under him. What was the man going to spring on him now - a test? His nose still itched a little; he didn't scratch it. He hung there, unresisting, a punch-bag, waiting for the boxer to take a swing.

Snape, having resumed his position on the other side of the desk, leaned back in his seat contemplating the unsuspecting boy. His silence magnified the tension. Neville felt an awful, nervous impulse to giggle.

Snape's own immediate impulse had been to Floo Dumbledore and pass the buck - the students' emotional welfare was the purlieu of the headmaster, was it not? Yet it was not strictly a school matter. Unwillingly Snape conceded that this responsibility was his alone and that he was uniquely qualified for the task. The knowledge did not help him. Nothing he could do or say would make this any easier - for himself or Neville. Why make it easier though? Life wasn't easy. Should these children be brought up to expect things to be _easy_? The boy had to hear the plain facts and deal with them. It wasn't up to Snape to sugar coat the pill. Nobody had ever sweetened the truth for him, and he had survived…

The round, puzzled, ingenuous face peered back at him.

"What did I do, Sir?" Neville asked again, resigned to shouldering the blame for another unknown misdemeanour. His passivity incensed Snape. When would he learn to stand up for himself?

"Listen to me, Longbottom - _you_ have done nothing! Do you hear me?"

_Whatever people say, you have got to believe that it is not your fault, otherwise… Otherwise you will spend your life regretting something that you were powerless to change, apologising for other people's failures, hiding someone else's shameful secrets…_

Neville still didn't understand.

"So what **didn't** I do then, Sir?" he whispered fearfully.

And Snape found himself in an almost unheard of situation - prevaricating to spare someone's feelings. Possibly his own.

"I hear you spent some time with your Great Uncle this holiday?"

"Yes, Sir." Neville cautiously agreed, waiting for the catch, a ghastly suspicion growing inside him that maybe Uncle Algie had put Snape up to this. That they were in it together. That some excruciating magical challenge was about to be issued…

"And that was because… your grandmother had other pressing concerns which required her immediate attention?" Snape was feeling his way carefully, assessing how much the boy knew.

"I suppose so, Sir." Neville hadn't thought about it that way. He never bothered himself with what his grandmother did when she wasn't at home baking. He was even more uncomfortable now - surely Snape hadn't called him back for a _chat_?

"And how did you occupy yourself while you were away?" Snape realised instinctively that he had to engage the boy's confidence before he set about shattering it. Establishing any sort of rapport was a tall order given their history so far, but somehow Snape had to persuade the child that - this time -he was not acting out of spite…

"I asked you a question, Longbottom."

Neville swallowed hard, sucked at his panic-parched lips and uttered a tremulous, diminuendo squeak. This called for more than a straight affirmative, yet somehow his powers of speech, grammar and even knowledge of basic terminology had been erased from his memory.

Interlocking his fingers, the knuckles whitening, Snape crushed his irritation like walnuts between clasped hands and prepared to try again. He was not accustomed to talking to his students - _at_ them, perhaps, but not _with_ them. Even when he was with Harry, they rarely entered into any meaningful conversation. The occasional Quidditch comment was about as far as it went. But this pudgy potato was hardly Quidditch material. Snape had little notion of what subjects the average sixteen year old wizard might be open to discuss with an adult. But then, Longbottom was scarcely an average child.

"Have you also been revising Herbology?" Anyone who knew Neville well would have known this was a safe bet. To Snape, who did not, the question seemed nothing short of inspirational, and he congratulated himself, especially when he saw a sudden spark of interest animate the boy's features.

"Not as such, Sir, no, but it's funny you should say that, because I have been giving a deal of thought to your sub-soil…" Neville had doubted that he would ever muster the courage to mention his ideas for Snape's garden, and now the man had presented him with a golden opportunity.

"You'd be better off giving thought to your sub-standard performance in class," the Potions master sniped, not appearing remotely interested in Neville's theories; he probably wasn't even listening. He looked bored already. Perversely that encouraged Neville to continue.

"It was the Bladderwrack as put me in mind of it, Sir."

"Bladderwrack?" Snape echoed incredulously, much as Harry had done earlier. It was that sort of a word. _So he was listening!_

"Yes, Sir. You see, the HAGRI report said…"

"Hagrid? What's he got to do with it?"

"No, Sir. The Horticultural And Garden Research Institute. Ages ago I'd read about their survey on the beneficial properties of kelp as a soil reconditioning agent, and then when I was thrown off the pier…" He tailed off, observing that Snape was resting his forehead against his hand, and appeared to have his eyes shut. The day was catching up with him.

"Sorry, Sir," he mumbled.

Snape's budding sympathy for the boy had been pruned hard back. There was a reason he had always disliked this child - and this was it: the earnest, inconsequential rambling. It irked him more than the incompetence. But, he needed the boy to trust him.

"No, go on," he sighed, rubbing tired eyes. "But get to the point, will you?"

"You can achieve a similar effect with good, old-fashioned banana skins - you have to bury them, you know - but apparently kelp is far superior because of the interaction of the mineral salts with the carbon," enthused Neville. "Its exceptionally rapid bio-degradation, makes it useful as conditioning agent, but it is also very good as an aerator or even a mulch. The trials had it performing right up there on a par with bio-magically enhanced agricultural vermiculite. That's quite something, isn't it, Sir?"

"What? Oh, indeed." The question startled Snape. He found Longbottom's transformation from Potions' liability to botanical specialist faintly disturbing, but he could see why Sprout would want to nurture this talent. He had the suspicion that what the boy was saying might even be relevant.

"This is all very fascinating, Longbottom, I'm sure. But I fail to see why you should be concerning yourself with my soil."

Neville looked crestfallen; he had thought that was obvious.

"Because Tonks said your herb garden was flattened, Sir. She said they trampled right through it and ruined the plants, and that the wind direction meant that all the ash and soot from the fire got blown all over it. You'll have terrible problems with compaction and lack of aeration; the pH levels in the soil will be horribly out of balance - I don't rightly like to think what the nitrogen:phosphate ratios might be – the topsoil will be heavily contaminated with the carbon; it'll be stripped of mychorrhizal fungi - they assist with nutrient uptake, Sir – and the micro-organisms in the soil will have been poisoned. Gosh, there probably aren't even any worms. Without worms, you see, Sir -"

"That'll do! When I need a lesson in vermiculture, I'll ask!" Snape's patience had its limits, even when he was endeavouring to hold his distaste at arms' length.

Neville cut himself off with an apologetic croak, colouring to the roots of his hair, but still deeply troubled by the worm problem. Snape regarded him thoughtfully. Quig hadn't been unduly concerned about the state of the earth, reflected Snape, but then the fire at the cottage was insignificant compared with the massive bushfires the elf must have witnessed in Australia. For all his lamentable faults, the boy did seem well-informed about plants.

"You should discuss this with my house elf. He manages the garden."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir." Neville grinned awkwardly.

Snape checked the time. "However, I didn't ask you here to talk about mud. Longbottom, I have to inform you…" This was more difficult than he could have imagined. He found himself hedging again, searching for an appropriate introduction.

"Parents may have high, often unreasonable, expectations for their children…"

_Oh no, what's Uncle Algie been saying? _But again Snape made no reference to the old wizard and his magical challenges. Indeed, it seemed to Neville, that the Potions master was struggling with the subject, treating it with less than his usual precision and objectivity.

"Equally, children may have unrealistic expectations of their parents, which we - er, they – find impossible to fulfil. Their short-comings may be a source of disappointment. Their actions may inadvertently cause us – er, them – harm… And we are the ones left to live with the consequences…"

Snape had picked up his quill from the desk top and was twisting it back and forth, cracking the smooth lie of the feather as he stroked the barbs against the 'grain'. An unconscious gesture; an occupation for his fingers; an outlet ... Catching Neville's wondering eyes upon him, he laid the quill casually aside, stilling the slight tremor in his hands. Neville could read nothing in Snape's tightly controlled features, but he was left with the peculiar impression that he had committed another offence of some sort; that Snape did not want to talk to him at all but was here under coercion, as though he, Neville, had lashed the master to his chair and was holding him at wand-point… Neville knew that he had, once again, misunderstood. _Live with what consequences? _All he could think was that the guy was planning some ghastly scheme to punish Remus and that, somehow, Harry was going to be left to pick up the pieces.

"Shouldn't you be telling this to Harry, Sir?" he suggested innocently.

"Harry? This has nothing to do with Harry, you foolish boy!"

_Or did it?_ Gradually Snape was coming to the realisation that everything he did now concerned Harry in one way or another and affected his life, just as his own parents had left their indelible imprint on his existence.

"My relationship with Harry is another matter entirely - and one which I am hardly likely to discuss with you!" he snarled.

"No, Sir."

Snape hadn't meant to vent his irritation, but it was forcing its way through his assumed detachment just as surely as the weeds in the driveway at the Manor. There was something in the _guilelessness_ of this child that both disarmed and infuriated him. But it wouldn't help either of them if he lost his temper now. Whatever sort of a hellish day he might have had (and, by his standards it had been relatively tame: no death threats, no hooded assassins - so why did he feel so drained and ragged?), he had to divorce himself from it and focus on the boy.

He eyed Neville gravely.

"Longbottom, are you aware that your mother has been moved to a new ward at St Mungo's? That it was necessary to assign her to a more 'secure' unit? That you were sent to visit your Great Uncle because your grandmotherhad beensummonedto Londonto authorise the relocation?"

Neville had stiffened at the mention of his mother. Snape knew that, as an outsider, he was breaking a rigid family taboo in discussing her openly. The Longbottoms' condition was common knowledge amongst Snape's generation or anyone who had lived through the rise and first overthrow of the Dark Lord, but Neville had kept it a jealously guarded secret from his fellow students.

"Why?" the boy whispered.

Why indeed? Subconsciously Snape's hand rose to his neck, massaging gently where the bruises had been. Where the thin, emaciated hands of that deceptively frail woman had seized him by the throat, squeezing with an unnatural, manic strength in that frenzied attack on his life.

"_Die, Death Eater!_" Her dry, soulless cackle still hissed in his ears. Had she followed her son out of the short-staffed wards and watched where he went? Watched him as he entered Snape's room in the hospital? What Healer would take any notice of mumbling, shuffling, little, harmless Alice? She was part of the furniture. She could slip into a ward and become instantly invisible, sitting docilely in a corner, sorting her scraps of pretty paper. Had she come back later and, in a flash of distorted lucidity, recognised Snape for the Death Eater he had once been? To her twisted logic, it did not matter that Snape himself had not been responsible for her torture. Had all her years of hatred and madness been channelled into that one, vicious act of revenge? Snape didn't know. All he knew was that, as her nails, sharpened to jagged talons, raked his flesh he had found himself staring into the past… into the grey, twisted features and insanely vacant eyes of his own... memories.

Neville was gaping at him in horror. He had gone very pale and looked as though he might be sick.

"No. No, she wouldn't, Sir. Not her. She couldn't. It's a mistake, Sir."

"No mistake, Longbottom. I'm sorry." Sorry? This boy's mother had tried to kill him and here he was saying _he_ was sorry? Neville was still staring at him in shocked disbelief, which, as the full implications dawned on him, morphed into abject terror. He'd be even more terrified if he realised how nearly she had succeeded in her assassination.

"Longbottom…" The boy cringed as Snape leaned towards him. "For Merlin's sake! I'm not going to hurt you. For once in your miserable, mediocre life will you stop goggling at me like that brainless toad of yours and _listen_? Haven't you heard what I've been saying? No one blames _you_ for this, and you are not to blame yourself. Do you understand?"

Neville blinked dumbly. Snape's words were flailing dangerously and unintelligibly around his brain like a drunken giant. He cowered away from them.

"Sit up straight! Anyone would think I was going to hit you!" exclaimed Snape in exasperation.

That was precisely what Neville did think. Hit him, or Hex him. Or chop him into pieces and boil him up in his largest cauldron, render his bones down to glue…

At that instant Snape disliked himself - he disliked the sudden rush of antagonism he felt towards the helpless student. It swept into him like a Spring tide, filling the dry crater that had opened in his chest, a cavern whose dark vaults echoed with understanding. A bitter wave of fellow-feeling rolled through him, until he choked on empathy. He fiercely resisted the sickening impulse to_ identify_ with Neville Longbottom.

Snape knew exactly how the boy was feeling - the sense of betrayal, isolation, the additional weight of one more shame - not that that would have been any consolation to Neville right now. They sat eyeing each other with mutual mistrust, while the chance of healing confidences drifted away, out of reach.

Humanity demanded that Snape offer some kind of comfort or reassurance to the stricken boy, but it proved too great a demand on his emotional spectrum: the kind words were not there; he was not wired for tenderness; the moment slipped past.

"I do not intend to press charges," he said stiffly. "Certain staff at St Mungo's, your grandmother, Professor Dumbledore and myself are the only ones aware of the true circumstances. It will be wholly up to you whether or not you divulge this to anyone."

"They think it was Remus," Neville murmured, his voice flat and lifeless.

"They _what_?"

"Harry and Hermione. They think it was Professor Lupin who…" Neville's gaze travelled reluctantly to Snape's throat.

"Is that so?" The smirk was unintentional. But the fact that they could have seriously doubted the werewolf was curiously gratifying.

"So they'll be pleased when I tell them…"

"Are you going to tell them? Is that advisable?" Experience warned him strongly against it.

Neville gave him a brave and watery smile.

"Oh, they know she's bonkers, Sir. I couldn't let them go on thinking badly about Rem– Professor Lupin - they've been that worried about him."

_Worried?_

"As you wish." Snape's mouth tightened. He'd been flattering himself with the fancy that Harry might leap to his defence - but no, he'd have to go on fighting his own battles alone, as always. Safer that way. And as for anything else - these kids would stand by their friend, not make his life even more of a misery. Longbottom wouldn't have to endure the jaunts and tears… no, he corrected, the _taunts and jeers_… Snape needed to keep reminding himself how very different Harry was from the other Potter - James.

"Neville?" He spoke more gently.

"I'm alright, Sir." Neville took a deep breath, drawing on such reserves of quiet fortitude that for a moment Snape envied him. "She's been crazy all my life, Sir. What's a little more crazy?"

He sniffed and stood up shakily.

"Thank you, Sir."

_Thank you? You're thanking me, for digging the gulf of disillusion and loneliness just that bit deeper?_ _Save your thanks._ Snape rose to see him out.

"Before you go - your mother dropped this in my room. You may wish to return it." Snape reached into his cloak and drew out a mother-of-pearl button. Tears welled in Neville's eyes as his fist closed round the small, white object. It felt warm in his hand; coming from Snape's pocket, he had expected it to be cold.

X X X

Harry and Hermione were pacing the corridor, waiting for him. They hurried forwards.

"Crikey, Nev, you've been in there ages. I'm frozen. Let's get out of here," urged Harry.

Hermione noticed the tear tracks on Neville's cheeks. She took his arm in a sisterly way.

"Don't let Snape get to you, Neville. He's an utter bastard. Ignore him. What did he say?"

Neville tried to recall any part of the foregoing conversation that he could repeat without embarrassing himself.

"He said he was going to dissect my nose into quarters… And he said you were 'doubtable'…"

"Huh! We'll see about that!" she bristled.

"…and…"

"And…?"

"And it wasn't Remus…"

XXX

**END OF STORY.**

**I hope you enjoyed it. Hope the ending came as a surprise to some of you. I apologise that some of the earlier chapters had to be misleading - it was actually quite difficult, especially in the Snape:Dumbledore chapters, making it sound as though they were talking about Harry rather than Neville and Remus rather than Alice or Neville. (Go on - read them again, if you don't believe me!)**

**If you review - and I really hope you do - please don't give away the ending by revealing the identity of the attacker! (Well, I sometimes read the reviews first to assess whether a story is worth looking at…). Thanks guys!**

1 Pontefract Cakes - coin-shaped sweets made of very strong liquorice

2 Grover Hipworth (b.1742) – inventor of Pepperup Potion; Sacharissa Tugwood (b.1874) – inventor of Beautifying Potion.

**No plans for a sequel. May try to load just one more before the HBP frenzy hits us all : it's a Marauders story this time...**


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